Sloterdijk/Zizek is shallow, and has no cosmic sense. The discussion of myself, Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger, is another region. They say many things that are correct, but gibt keine Denken, gibt keine Wirklichkeit. Reality and thought are the same. Shallow people never feel this. only shallowness calls such a cosmic sense “idealism”, as though it were half of a “theory”.

God is “überflüssig”, but only because the most spiritual will to power, der geistigste, is living, i.e., open and not perfectible.

The mystical individualism of post-Borgia Christendom, makes the text into an idol, to replace the Pope. No “truth in interpretation” is to be found, even amidst the positive appropriative act of be the “flesh of human weakness”, the un-ziel in toto announces itself as irreconcilable.

Kriemhild, divine virtue, under a fragrance of blood and breath. Never the malignancy of a “meno” , frustrated politically, in infinitely intense resentment. Ergo: Heidegger sagt: Philosophy is Over. It will not be reborn. The ground of decision is prior to speech, nothing can be deliberative. weigh well, with respect to “value”.

Ergo: amusement, relief, openness, lightness of spirit,

--

Ergo: such geist as “Liberté, Égalité, Fragilité”, such geist which is more than gesellshaft, more than mere public agreement, “equality of outcome” has no GOD, ergo, is untaken decision of unconsciousness. Ergo, it is willed by the will, and not time.

thumos is only a talk of the politically ambitious, but the rest of the mind, soul, or Platonic psychology is equally in play. Since Schmitt the notion of politics has lost any gravity and become vague since all-comprehensive.

the meaning of demos goes back to Linear B, and remains profoundly misted, adding -arcy creeps into the range of the confussin which for idiots like Meno is undecptavly known in the imbecile unconsciousness of the everyday.

Sloterdijk/Zizek is shallow, and has no cosmic sense. The discussion of myself, Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger, is another region. They say many things that are correct, but gibt keine Denken, gibt keine Wirklichkeit. Reality and thought are the same. Shallow people never feel this. only shallowness calls such a cosmic sense “idealism”, as though it were half of a “theory”.

God is “überflüssig”, but only because the most spiritual will to power, der geistigste, is living, i.e., open and not perfectible.

The mystical individualism of post-Borgia Christendom, makes the text into an idol, to replace the Pope. No “truth in interpretation” is to be found, even amidst the positive appropriative act of be the “flesh of human weakness”, the un-ziel in toto announces itself as irreconcilable.

Kriemhild, divine virtue, under a fragrance of blood and breath. Never the malignancy of a “meno” , frustrated politically, in infinitely intense resentment. Ergo: Heidegger sagt: Philosophy is Over. It will not be reborn. The ground of decision is prior to speech, nothing can be deliberative. weigh well, with respect to “value”.

Ergo: amusement, relief, openness, lightness of spirit,

--

Ergo: such geist as “Liberté, Égalité, Fragilité”, such geist which is more than gesellshaft, more than mere public agreement, “equality of outcome” has no GOD, ergo, is untaken decision of unconsciousness. Ergo, it is willed by the will, and not time.

thumos is only a talk of the politically ambitious, but the rest of the mind, soul, or Platonic psychology is equally in play. Since Schmitt the notion of politics has lost any gravity and become vague since all-comprehensive.

the meaning of demos goes back to Linear B, and remains profoundly misted, adding -arcy creeps into the range of the confussin which for idiots like Meno is undecptavly known in the imbecile unconsciousness of the everyday.

---- ---- -----

The veritable is absolute. Semantic identification is incomplete out of context, and your observation. In prioritizing meaning and action appears correct insofar as the invalidation of the priority of the word can be demonstrated as such.

The most elemental organic life has been shown to choose over one to a more advantageous position, is the primal argument for that interpretation.

How that differs in kind from verbal distinction, of the origin of signs can also poatscribed the post modern philosophical notion of signaling.

But how does that process demonstrate a disunity between the original meaning to the modern - post modern anthropic notion?

Unless it can justify a semiotic functional derivative , as your German references exercise, the invariable sign s cannot totally explain the use of language to fill inn the transition between archaic and modern usage of language.

We can't simply take language as a given in-situ, and change meanings to adapt to current situations. Therefore Therefore . your interpretation is correct in situ, but not as a transcendental foundation , if I understand you .

That directly relates to the notion of foundation as relating to it to it'self.That such is necessary, even as you describe the topical understanding of the ideal, not to mention, the ideas which are the their derivative, functional analysis becomes impossible, and the opium pdntje people becomes a necessary adhesive of what god represents to them. And for them UNITY serves am absolute purpose in existence, weather they be the worship of totum, or an Anthropomorphic IDEA. Its roots, pervade and Nietzsche did not really kill god.

This strict religious identity is more formative then nationalism , or any other group-set theory which can border sets of members. In this sense religion transcends the identity of national bounderies or ethnic characteristically, although that linkage is ever unserstood, correctly.

So I do agree that actions come before communicative signaling for most practical purposes, because of this unawareness of inter-relative linkage, it does not prove that they are .This collusion of semantic arguments with the postscripted actions makes the difference , since the original in-situ actions were not. Meaning sneaks in like a thief in the night , to capture which ever unknown variable comes in to take up the slack . A very slight shift over the course of generations can create a solid foundation , albeit only by deference to lower meaning structures

Ergo: zizek at. al are realistic and shallow purposely, so as to be able not to be accused of insignificance and trivially mundane. I can't believe otherwise, and that goes even for Heidegger, Hegel and Nietzsche.

Now one way to argue against the above is simply do what you accuse me of doing, vis. painting clouds in the sky, but that would be too easy and shallow In It's Self. That mode of categorical dismissal would imply a total exclusion of a view , which way of arguing defeats the purpose with the newly -sementically formed foundation. Negation by absolute does not defeat the conception of total disengagement in a relative sense.

Meno_ wrote:Sloterdijk/Zizek is shallow, and has no cosmic sense. The discussion of myself, Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche and Heidegger, is another region. They say many things that are correct, but gibt keine Denken, gibt keine Wirklichkeit. Reality and thought are the same. Shallow people never feel this. only shallowness calls such a cosmic sense “idealism”, as though it were half of a “theory”.

God is “überflüssig”, but only because the most spiritual will to power, der geistigste, is living, i.e., open and not perfectible.

The mystical individualism of post-Borgia Christendom, makes the text into an idol, to replace the Pope. No “truth in interpretation” is to be found, even amidst the positive appropriative act of be the “flesh of human weakness”, the un-ziel in toto announces itself as irreconcilable.

Kriemhild, divine virtue, under a fragrance of blood and breath. Never the malignancy of a “meno” , frustrated politically, in infinitely intense resentment. Ergo: Heidegger sagt: Philosophy is Over. It will not be reborn. The ground of decision is prior to speech, nothing can be deliberative. weigh well, with respect to “value”.

Ergo: amusement, relief, openness, lightness of spirit,

--

Ergo: such geist as “Liberté, Égalité, Fragilité”, such geist which is more than gesellshaft, more than mere public agreement, “equality of outcome” has no GOD, ergo, is untaken decision of unconsciousness. Ergo, it is willed by the will, and not time.

thumos is only a talk of the politically ambitious, but the rest of the mind, soul, or Platonic psychology is equally in play. Since Schmitt the notion of politics has lost any gravity and become vague since all-comprehensive.

the meaning of demos goes back to Linear B, and remains profoundly misted, adding -arcy creeps into the range of the confussin which for idiots like Meno is undecptavly known in the imbecile unconsciousness of the everyday.

---- ---- -----

The veritable is absolute. Semantic identification is incomplete out of context, and your observation. In prioritizing meaning and action appears correct insofar as the invalidation of the priority of the word can be demonstrated as such.

The most elemental organic life has been shown to choose over one to a more advantageous position, is the primal argument for that interpretation.

How that differs in kind from verbal distinction, of the origin of signs can also postscripted the post modern philosophical notion of signaling.

But how does that process demonstrate a disunity between the original meaning to the modern - post modern anthropic notion?

Unless it can justify a semiotic functional derivative , as your German references exercise, the invariable sign s cannot totally explain the use of language to fill inn the transition between archaic and modern usage of language.

We can't simply take language as a given in-situ, and change meanings to adapt to current situations. Therefore Therefore . your interpretation is correct in situ, but not as a transcendental foundation , if I understand you .

That directly relates to the notion of foundation as relating to it to it'self.That such is necessary, even as you describe the topical understanding of the ideal, not to mention, the ideas which are the their derivative, functional analysis becomes impossible, and the opium pdntje people becomes a necessary adhesive of what god represents to them. And for them UNITY serves am absolute purpose in existence, weather they be the worship of totum, or an Anthropomorphic IDEA. Its roots, pervade and Nietzsche did not really kill god.

This strict religious identity is more formative then nationalism , or any other group-set theory which can border sets of members. In this sense religion transcends the identity of national bounderies or ethnic characteristically, although that linkage is ever unserstood, correctly.

So I do agree that actions come before communicative signaling for most practical purposes, because of this unawareness of inter-relative linkage, it does not prove that they are .This collusion of semantic arguments with the postscripted actions makes the difference , since the original in-situ actions were not. Meaning sneaks in like a thief in the night , to capture which ever unknown variable comes in to take up the slack . A very slight shift over the course of generations can create a solid foundation , albeit only by deference to lower meaning structures

Ergo: zizek at. al are realistic and shallow purposely, so as to be able not to be accused of insignificance and trivially mundane. I can't believe otherwise, and that goes even for Heidegger, Hegel and Nietzsche.

Now one way to argue against the above is simply do what you accuse me of doing, vis. painting clouds in the sky, but that would be too easy and shallow In It's Self. That mode of categorical dismissal would imply a total exclusion of a view , which way of arguing defeats the purpose with the newly -sementically formed foundation. Negation by absolute does not defeat the conception of total disengagement in a relative sense.

-and noe the latest:

Don't tell former FBI general counsel James Baker that those now-infamous discussions about secretly recording President Donald Trump and using the tapes to remove him from office were a joke.

He apparently doesn't believe it. And he held quite the vantage point - he was on the inside of the bureau's leadership in May 2017, when the discussions occurred.

Baker told Congress last week that his boss - then-Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe - was dead serious about the idea of surreptitiously recording the 45th president and using the evidence to make the case that Trump should be removed from office, according to my sources.

Baker told lawmakers he wasn't in the meeting that McCabe had with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in which the subject came up. But he did have firsthand conversations with McCabe and the FBI lawyer assigned to McCabe, Lisa Page, about the issue.

"As far as Baker was concerned, this was a real plan being discussed," said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation. "It was no laughing matter for the FBI."

Word of Baker's testimony surfaces just days before Rosenstein is set to be interviewed in private on Thursday by House Judiciary Committee lawmakers.

Since The New York Times first reported the allegations, Rosenstein, the No. 2 Department of Justice (DOJ) official, has tried to downplay his role in them. His office has suggested that he thought the discussions were a joke, that Rosenstein never gave an order to carry out such a plot, and that he does not believe Trump should be removed from office.

But making those statements through a spokesperson is a bit different than having Rosenstein himself face Congress and answer the questions under penalty of felony if lawmakers think he is lying.

Baker's account to lawmakers this month clearly complicates an already complicated picture for Rosenstein before Congress, assuming he shows up for Thursday's interview.

But even more so, Baker's story lays bare an extraordinary conversation in which at least some senior FBI officials thought it within their purview to try to capture the president on tape and then go to the president's own Cabinet secretaries, hoping to persuade the senior leaders of the administration to remove the president from power.

Even more extraordinary is the timing of such discussions: They occurred, according to Baker's account, in the window around FBI Director James Comey's firing. Could it be that the leaders of a wounded, stunned FBI were seeking retribution for their boss' firing with a secret recording operation?

I doubt this is the power that Congress intended to be exercised when it created the FBI a century ago, or the circumstances in which the authors of the 25th Amendment imagined a president's removal could be engineered.

This wasn't a president who was incapacitated at the time. He was fully exercising his powers - but in a way the FBI leadership did not like.

And that makes the FBI's involvement in the tape-record-then-dump-Trump conversations overtly political - even if Rosenstein believed the whole idea was farcical.

Keep in mind, this is the same FBI that, a few months earlier during the 2016 election, had its top counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok talking to Page - his lover and the top lawyer to McCabe - about using their official powers to "stop" Trump in the election and having an "insurance policy" against the GOP nominee. That insurance policy increasingly looks like an unverified dossier created by British intelligence operative Christopher Steele - a Trump hater himself - that was bought and paid for by the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign through their mutual law firm.

"You walk away from the Baker interview with little doubt that the FBI leadership in that 2016-17 time-frame saw itself as far more than a neutral investigative agency but actually as a force to stop Trump's election before it happened and then maybe reversing it after the election was over," said a source directly familiar with the congressional investigation.

Baker provided some other valuable insights in his congressional interview. As I reported last week, he revealed that he accepted information in the Russia investigation from a lawyer for the Democratic National Committee.

And my sources also confirm Baker admitted he received a version of Steele's dossier from left-leaning reporter David Corn of Mother Jones magazine, and then forwarded it to Strzok's team. Corn says that occurred in November 2016, right after the election.

That transaction is significant for two reasons. First, at the time Steele had just been fired from the FBI probe for leaking to the media and he wasn't supposed to be further assisting the probe. So Corn essentially acted as a back door to allow information to continue to flow.

Secondly, the FBI was using the news media as an investigative source outside the normal chain of evidence.

Whatever you think of Rosenstein or the Russia probe, the statements Baker made to Congress have implications for all Americans.

The FBI was created to investigate crimes and stop foreign intelligence and terrorism threats. It was never designed to be a broker in the political process of elections or the execution of the 25th Amendment.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists' misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He is The Hill's executive vice president for video.

The Resistance stance coincides in substance what IKE -Dwight Eisenhower warned about 60 years ago warning about the military industrial complex.

This has been mentioned before, but has been used by the resistance in a format less in the evolving context of the situation as it stands today.

According to script Trump is acting out these previous warnings : The corporate world elite, has am agenda specifically targeting the so called U.S. hegemony and nationalism, in fact what they want is opposite to what Trump says.

But Trump is like a bugle boy, and as all presidents his p.r. is carefully crafted to am identifying middle man, to sell the goods to the highest bidder.

The five always are plentiful: no taxes to the elite, who are major corporate leaders of international scope.

They are symptomatic of gutting the middle and lower classes out of their substantial identity by doubling down on the lower economic tier by turning consumerism into an ideological aim.

And they are getting better at it. The astronomical figures of accumulated wealth , contrast starkly in the amount of corporate taxes levied : in IKE'' era of surpassed 90%, and today it has been cut to practically to 0%. The desperation for the continuation of the American Empire has a noteworthy feature that the 1% can not fathom in an era of short term corporate profits, which are trying to be in some fiscal rhythm-to negate Marx's prediction of diminishing returns at the point where certain limits in value are reached.

Marx did predict the fall of Capitalism, and this desperation. , well known in the construction of tea similar mood in America- McCarthyism, which was seen at that early time as significant and a wake up call.

The demonizing of.Russia , served the industry of divestiture in armaments, to a.spectacular degree, and this business isn't he only absolute guaranty for big time profits.

The out to get us propaganda has snow balled since.the break up of.the Soviet Union, and I feel at this point guilty at this thought since the Soviet Brutality has noteworthy horrors of the killing of very young Hungarian patriots.

However, the adhesive politics is not always tacitly obvious and semantics can now, as it did before , whitewash any residual and easily forgotten minor skirmish.

The elitists have poured hundreds of billions into fracting oil, so they could establish the primacy of.the U.S., as the number one oil producer in the world, at a great loss.

That is what the power of.propaganda can do, at a tremendous price, which obviously is affordable to them on the same premise as deconstructing the structure of.any institution, be it the media, the political system and progressive institution of judicial, representative and social artifacts

To those dispossessed, time is a matter of saynto day struggle for jobs, health care etc.; but to those holding astronomical and some fortunes , already computerized with more and more certainty of profit taking, losses will be rewarded by inside knowledge of when to buy puts on investments

As fortunate this appears to such people and institutions , it amounts to a gutting out of social values.

Now the ability to do this hinges on victimization of certain people, and the easiest mark is the powerless immigrant, the racially excluded and others, who are getting less and less able to exercise what has been basis basis of political power.

The costly wars of the Greeks is a.precedent where empires sank, and Britain's loss of.the Pound as the major leading international currency marked Her for the fall. The signification was her conflict with Nasser over the Suez Canal.

Incidentally, there is linkage there with international indecision over saving the Hungarian Revolution's 1956-7 patriots, sorely it was just a.skirmish.

Other precedents was when the still fixed and sustains Brit Empire refused to help the imprisoned Tzar, his own close relative

Now the big question of.determination and policy grew a tune ever stronger.to allow those who kind of intuited the real signs in yet a progressive era, and how and when a reversal would commence.

The reversal started around the 1960's when the social programs started to be financed with increasing borrowing, and the mostly financed by U.S. printed bonds, imdentified by politically and militarily pressures inn the Chinese. The Chinese.grabbed the offer, since at that.time the Sino-Soviet alliance was at its lowest ebb in unifying ideology in terms of.the Communist.Internationale.

However, if China would cash those securities at this time, it would shorten the time when the U.S. monetary collapse would take place.

At this extremely tense time, they constructed the very fitting presidential actor-clown, who can fulfill the dual functions of.tragedy and comedy.

This brings the ideological basis.to what is.really happening in the control world.

The U.S. has been reduced-gutted of.social philosophy onto the use of semantic and contradictory hype, as if, the promises of a Kantian-synthetically bridges.sense.could work, amid a.failed Leibnitz type functionally actionable process, by the use of a mirrored gloss of naive realism of the type which were invented as a defensive tactic of the future use of seminal revision of basic textual authority.

The issue underlying this whole scenario of the reduced seminal use of contradiction as the basis of a new order, is, whether the very basic pragmatic concept can survive such elemental distortions, or if anyone can survive the coming realization of wjat really is going on.

That.depends on the further compressor of technology with art, and the.Mercedes.has been severely attacked by the number one auto producer in the world today: Alan Musk. Can that huge symbol become the sign of a Eurozone failure? Is that why MUsk has been so demonized.of late?

Probably

An earlier prediction still stands, probably, that a cap. total of individual wealth of 1 trillion dollars, inflation and interest rates factored in, may be a bench mark limit.( This is merely gut level)

Owner of Amazon is nearing 200 billion dollars.

After that, if it ever gets there., the bubble will burst.

But will it?

Departing U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley on Tuesday morning lauded White House senior adviser Jared Kushner as a "hidden genius" of the Trump administration.

Haley made the remark from the Oval Office as she announced her resignation at the end of the year.

"I can't say enough good things about Jared and Ivanka [Trump]," she said. "Jared is such a hidden genius that no one understands."

Haley gave Kushner credit for renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deal last week.

Capital the hidden ideal as envisioned by Atlas Shrugged, has a very simple premise for its undoing.

Capital and Democracy are not natural co-ordinates,jointly and directly proportional, to the same forces caused by internal and external factors; the momentum of their move ment and their vectors separateAt times the separation is minimal and re-constructanle, of certain limits to su h allow enough depth to the evolving margin, so as to enable sufficient corrections to modify the unwanted effects of total marginal corruptibility.

Corruption is used in a hyper relative sense, that is topographic and open to analysis of symptomatic signs of stealing, collusion , and baseless manipulation.

But corruption in the widest sense also considers the probable curvature of what Marcuse used to call devolvement of structural depth unto one dimensional linerality.

Actions by impulse and insufficiently based criteria, will insubstantiate.

The fact may be hiding on the universal grasp on denial of historical artifact.

Building the U.S. great again is an example of adopting contradictory messages to the world stage. Most of Eurasia labors in a world historicism of long established boundaries, whereas U.S. apostasy, is structured on denying those boundaries. The political reactivism contrasts strongly with boundaries per-se, because the figurative basis clashes with its substantive construct.

Its like a newly rich but very crass person moving next to an established and ancient respected one, for whom it would appear de-class to consider their substantial wealth as opposed to their standing and lineage.

The abstract firms of ideology are superior to the ones which have merely a wide range of applications of advantage and utility, merely using market mechanisms to buy opportunity, such as those involved in hostile take-over, - creating the widest interpretation of opportunism.

It has been shown that internal competition may work on this level within national boundaries, and schools of thought have shown that if kept in those bounds, will minimize national boundaries within the constraint of separate and almost equal competitors on that stage of a reduced theater.

However an international stage, may not fathom an unbounded ergo unfounded theater-which can transform a seemingly harmless war over trade, into one where such war can create a real theater of real war.

This has precedent, and Trumpism at this moment may be unable the certain leakage between borders.

Here are a series of articles which brings these possibilities into the open:

Russian nuclear missile cruiser submarine Yuri Dolgoruky launches a Bulava missile (Image: GETTY)SKY-HIGH tensions between the US and Russia are putting critical treaties designed to prevent a nuclear arms race in jeopardy as relations sink to an all-time low, a senior Russian official has warned.By SIMON OSBORNE

Moscow’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov described Western governments as "adversaries, not friends" and said a “complete malfunction of the American system” meant longstanding weapons agreements could be binned, leaving nuclear powers without constraint in the event of a future conflict.

He said: “We could lose several elements on arms control infrastructure. The building is shaky.”

Mr Rybakov warned another round of sanctions intruded by Donald Trump in the summer were “dangerous” and getting in the way of negotiations over renewing the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty "New START" which saw both sides agree to reduce their deployed nuclear arms by half but is set to expire in 2021.

He said: “If there is no progress then risk of a real backfire grows.

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“I don’t think we can easily say the future of New START is bright.

“We truly do not see any desire on the US side at this point to engage in discussions on an extension ion the treaty which we have proposed.”

Mr Ryabkov was speaking as negotiators from the two countries met in Geneva to discuss a Cold War era treaty that was supposed to keep expansion of long-range nuclear-capable missiles in check.

Moscow and Washington have repeatedly accused each other of breaching the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, a 1987 pact which bans firing land-based missiles with a range of up to 5,500km.

Tupolev Tu-22M3M supersonic strike bomber

A new Tupolev Tu-22M3M supersonic strike bomber is unveiled in Kazan, Russia (Image: GETTY)The US ambassador to NATO warned Moscow against developing a new cruise missile that could be armed with nuclear warheads, arguing that it was in breach of the INF and could be used against members of the Western military alliance.

Kay Bailey Hutchison said: “Counter measures by the United States would be to take out the missiles that are in development by Russia in violation of the treaty. They are on notice.”

The US government took a more aggressive line against Russia this year, when Mr Trump unveiled a new nuclear strategy that revolved around countering Russia and called for the development of small tactical nuclear weapons that were cheaper to maintain and could be used in more realistic scenarios.

Washington has also accelerated long-running US military plans to develop new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and nuclear-capable cruise missiles and has just confirmed hypersonic weapons testing is well underway.

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World War 3: US steps up arms race with new hypersonic missile testsThe sabre-rattling comes against a grim backdrop of mistrust with over the crisis in Ukraine, the conflict in Syria, allegations of Russian meddling in US elections and the Kremlin’s role in the attempt to assassinate former intelligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury.

Mr Ryabkov said: “We have a situation that is much, much worse than even during the most heated moments, or rather the coldest moments, of the past.”

He said Moscow would not be swayed by Dutch, British and US claims its agents had also sought to hack into the computer network of The Hague-based Office for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons as it investigated the attack on Mr Skripal.

He said: ”If some believe that this makes an impression on Russia and somehow causes Russia to hesitate, then that is a very wrong conclusion.

He said Moscow was not concerned about the growingly negative rhetoric coming from the West because it viewed Western governments as “adversaries, not friends”.

He said: “We do not believe that the broader West are friends with us. Rather, we see the West as an adversary that acts to undermine Russia’s positions and Russia's perspective for normal development.

“So why should we care so much about our standing among adversaries?”

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HILLARY CLINTONClinton strikes back at Trump for saying she colluded with RussiaThe president has been making his former rival an issue on the midterms campaign trail.by Adam Edelman / Oct.12.2018 / 6:07 PM GMT

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at Oxford University on Oct. 9, 2018.Neil Hall / EPASHARE THIS —Hillary Clinton is hitting back at President Donald Trump for having claimed at a recent rally — without providing any evidence — that she was the one who colluded with Russia during the 2016 presidential contest.

At a rally on Wednesday night in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump directly accused Clinton of engaging in a conspiracy with Moscow to influence the race for the White House.

"There was collusion between Hillary, the Democrats and Russia," Trump said, just after his supporters had chanted "lock her up" about Clinton. "There was a lot of collusion with them and Russia and lots of other people."

Trump has discussed that theory publicly and on Twitter, but the charge amounted to a direct allegation that Clinton herself conspired with the Russian government to influence the election. He offered no evidence of his claim.

The idea prompted a swift Clinton comeback.

"Seriously, you asked Russia to hack me on national television," she tweeted Thursday afternoon.

The tweet was apparently in reference to a July 2016 press conference in which Trump invited the Russians to "find" thousands of missing emails from a personal server Clinton had used when she was secretary of state.

"I will tell you this, Russia: If you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing," Trump said then.

Minutes after Clinton tweeted Thursday, Donald Trump Jr. fired back, claiming that Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee had spent millions of dollars "working with foreign agents" to create a "fake dossier with them."

"You should really sit this one out," he told Clinton, adding that "every time you talk, we win."

Trump Jr.’s tweet was referring to the fact that a law firm representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC helped fund opposition research that eventually became a controversial dossier, known as the Steele dossier, on then-candidate Trump.

The back-and-forth comes as special counsel Robert Mueller continues to investigate whether Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia or obstructed justice afterward.

Investigation and political procedure :The extended period for Mueller to convey his findings on the Russian collusion and consequential obstruction of justice suggests imploding the national security issue.

NATIONAL SECURITYThe Russia Investigations: Unanswered Questions In The Eye Of The Storm

Special counsel Robert Mueller is required to submit a confidential report when his work is done, but the publication and circulation of whatever he files is not a sure thing.Alex Wong/Getty ImagesThis week in the Russia investigations: New reports set the table for the resumption of action if the special counsel's office is waiting until after the midterm elections.

The eye of the stormIf Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller isn't observing a de jure "quiet period" ahead of the Nov. 6 election, he is observing one de facto. Notwithstanding a lot of noise about the prospect of more indictments or other action, Mueller so far hasn't delivered.

That suggests that Washington, D.C., may be passing through the eye of the Russia imbroglio and will continue to experience a comparative calm until the arrival of the opposite inner wall of the storm, possibly after Election Day in less than a month.

If so — what happens then?

More charges, maybe. And it has become axiomatic within the capital to anticipate that Mueller plans to issue some kind of report about his findings — possibly a major Sept. 11 Commission-style printed book.

Mueller is required to submit a confidential report to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein when his work is done, but the publication and circulation of whatever he files are not a sure thing.

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What then? It all depends on what's in the paperwork. If Mueller's report says, "Resume your lives, citizens — all that can be known about the Russian attack on the 2016 election is known," that is significant, and great news besides for the White House.

If Mueller writes, "Dear Congress, my investigation suggests the president of the United States is a foreign agent," that might complicate matters.

President Trump's team does not seem that concerned about the latter scenario.

Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani has said in a few TV appearances that the president's legal team intends simply to rebut whatever Mueller files and suggests that the Russia imbroglio could end just like the beginning and middle of 2018: with dueling documents just like the memos and all the others.

But that kind of finality feels a ways off. There are so many questions that remain unanswered, both small and big, that the special counsel's office would need to resolve either between now and then or within some big notional report that capped off its work.

The take-home examThe next milestone in this saga could be the submission of written answers by Trump's lawyers to questions by Mueller's office, CNN reports. The questionnaire is said to focus on the alleged collusion track of this imbroglio, as opposed to the alleged obstruction-of-justice storyline.

But the document, if it does go to Mueller soon, would not be the last word between him and Trump. The president continues to hold open the possibility that he might sit down for an interview at some point — against the advice of his attorneys — although the negotiations have worn on for so long that it isn't clear whether Trump's position is real or just for public relations purposes.

Don't be surprised if the written answers, or an account about what they say, find their way into The New York Times.

Trump World has used the newspaper to condition much of the public perception about its negotiations with Mueller. The Times reported on the list of questions that Mueller's office wanted to ask, per the Trump team.

And the Times also obtained the Trump team's broad positions on the Russia matter, including its argument that Trump not only cannot obstruct justice by virtue of his presidential powers, but also that he effectively cannot break the law while in office because he can pardon himself.

That is not a consensus position in Washington.

The Smith matterMany other questions remain unanswered. One of them was raised again last week by The Wall Street Journal, which established that former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn had struck up a business relationship with a now-deceased Republican fundraiser named Peter Smith as far back as 2015.

A Wall Street Journal story has established that former national security adviser Michael Flynn had a relationship with a Russian fundraiser that predated the Trump campaign and that may have just predated the long flirtation between Flynn and the Russian government.Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty ImagesMeaning what? Smith was on the outer periphery of the Trump 2016 campaign, and he led an effort to try to get, and possibly to then verify that he had obtained, Hillary Clinton's emails.

Smith told a cyber-researcher and others in 2016 that he had been contacted by someone on "the Dark Web" who claimed to have emails stolen from the private server Clinton used when she was secretary of state. He wanted as much help and money as he could get to obtain the material and then exploit it somehow.

Smith was found dead last year in what authorities ruled a suicide. There hasn't been any public indication that he ever got Clinton's emails. And the FBI has said it had no evidence that Clinton's server was ever compromised, suggesting the Russians never had the electronic messages in the first place.

So why is this important?

Because what The Journal's story established is that Smith and Flynn had a relationship that predated the Trump campaign and that may have just predated the long flirtation between Flynn and the Russian government.

So they had known each other for awhile. How much did Flynn know about Smith's project in 2016 and how much did Flynn tell Trump? Did Trump encourage Smith directly or via Flynn?

If Smith was telling the truth about the overtures he was receiving, he was yet another in a parallel series of what appear to have been pilot wells the Russians were drilling in the Trump campaign, trying to find a reliable way through.

Rob Goldstone On His Infamous Russia Email: 'I Had No Idea What I Was Talking About'NATIONAL SECURITYRob Goldstone On His Infamous Russia Email: 'I Had No Idea What I Was Talking About'These also included the outreach to junior aide George Papadopoulos in London, to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions via the National Rifle Association and, most famously, through singer Emin Agalarov's publicist to Donald Trump Jr.

At least one milestone already has been established on the other side of the eyewall that might clear up some of this: Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI in exchange for his cooperation, is scheduled to be sentenced in mid-December.

The way that chapter ends might reveal more about Flynn's ties not only with Smith and Trump, but also with the Russians who apparently began cultivating Flynn after his defenestration from the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The pingsAnother big unresolved plotline in the Russia saga is over a putative Internet link between the Trump camp and Russia's Alpha Bank.

The New Yorker concluded last week, based on some obtuse and highly technical reportage, that it might have been connected to some kind of clandestine communications link. But the story was so hedged and couched that it's difficult to know what to make of it all.

This is one of those back alleys in this imbroglio that very few people can illuminate properly, and nearly all of those who can probably work for the National Security Agency.

The near-omniscience that the intelligence agency can exercise over the Internet — flashes of which come through in the work product of the special counsel's office — means that if anyone understands the Alpha Bank server pinging, it's those within the NSA.

But that also suggests that the public might not learn definitively what it means until Mueller elucidates it — if he ever does.

At this stage 'collusion' may be too strong and worn thin and tarnished word. An example of changing meaning through negative > positive shift in rhetoric.

The failure of a positive-nominal application through political discourse.

Now what if, a report does come out from Miller, once and for all, and what of, at last, some truthful description of what went on is finally realizes to all levels of society, and government?

Unlike the Warren Commission's huge volume which by many is considered a whitewash full of credible and noteworthy errors?

What if the Mueller finding will be right on point by point, a doubtless record at least by preponderance?

Wjat of Trump was compelled with a sort of sword of Democles forcing his hand? If so , would that have a solid basis to absolve and eifjten the situation through public sentiment?

We do love in an age of conflict and polarity, and am atmosphere of near vengeance hangs inn the balance, where the packing of the supreme court toward support, of it isnevw needed is one sign , which may be a give away. Not that this is not common practice among presidents , burn the veracity and anxiety of the fanfare accompanying this last nomination certainly suggest the expected need for favorable adjudication.

Mueller may have an ear for this, and the question. Is, is he astute enough to overcome this type ofnemd of the roadnsxenario and settle comfortably with it, without the binding question of it haunting him for the rest of his life, or, will be fact or this in as a further showung of deception? How much Trump knew, is a key factor, even if he didn't initiate an approval , and that will be the issue par excellamce upon which further legal movement either will proceede or shy away from.

WASHINGTON (CNN) Americans are becoming more likely to think President Donald Trump will win a second term in office, while Joe Biden stands atop a crowded field of Democrats perhaps looking to replace him, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS.

View this interactive content on CNN.comThe public is split over whether they think the President will win a second term -- 46% say he will and 47% say he won't. But that's a steep improvement for him since March, when 54% of adults said they thought he'd lose his bid for a second term. The share seeing a second Trump win in the offing has risen across party lines. The increase is a bit sharper among men (up 8 points), independents (from 39% in March to 47% now) and those who are enthusiastic about voting in this year's midterms (from 37% in March to 46% now).

The President's partisans are just as likely to want him renominated now as they were in March: Seventy-four percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say he should be the party's nominee in 2020, and 21% would rather see someone else at the top of the ticket.

In the race for the Democratic nomination to face Trump, former Vice President Biden leads a massive potential field. The poll asked Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents to choose their preferred presidential nominee among 16 possible candidates. Biden tops the list with 33% support, followed by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the 2016 runner-up, at 13%. Sen. Kamala Harris of California follows at 9%, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts at 8%. Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry garnered 5% support.

View this interactive content on CNN.comFormer New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently became a registered Democrat and spoke in New Hampshire on Saturday night, stands at 4% in the poll. Rep. Beto O'Rourke of Texas, currently running against Sen. Ted Cruz, also lands at 4%. Less than 1% said they back Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, the only declared candidate in the field, and just 1% choose attorney Michael Avenatti, who has been visiting early primary and caucus states.

The 2020 tap dance is on!Sanders continues to prompt some of the same divisions he did in 2016, garnering lower support among self-identified Democrats and older voters. Among those who consider themselves Democrats, 34% back Biden, 11% Harris, 9% Sanders and 8% Warren. Among independents who say they lean to the Democratic Party, however, Sanders stands in second place, with 21% (Biden has 31%, Warren 8% and Harris 7%).

Harris appears to be the biggest beneficiary of Sanders' challenges among Democratic partisans. Among those self-identified Democrats who consider themselves liberal, Harris' support spikes to 19%, still behind Biden at 27% but well ahead of Sanders, who earns just 7% support among that group.

When you add Democratic-leaning independents back to the mix, liberals are more evenly split, with 28% behind Biden, 15% Harris, 13% Sanders and 11% Warren. Among Democrats and Democratic-leaners who consider themselves more moderate or conservative, Biden stands well above the rest: 38% Biden, 14% Sanders and all the rest in single digits.

There is also still an age gap in the party over Sanders and Biden, with younger voters more apt to back Sanders than older voters (21% among those under age 45 versus 8% among older Democrats) and Biden's numbers far higher among those over 45 (39% in the older group back Biden versus 26% among younger Democrats). No other candidates receive significantly different support across age groups.

There is little gap in Biden's support between men (35%) and women (32%), suggesting the review of his role in Clarence Thomas' 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings during Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation process has not caused notable harm to the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

A look at the fracturing relationship between Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump

Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday lit into federal judges for what he called a dramatic uptick in "outrageous" decisions threatening to interfere with the separation of powers by exposing internal White House deliberations.

In a fiery speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation in Washington, Sessions warned that "once we go down this road in American government, there is no turning back." He vowed to take "these discovery fights to the Supreme Court in emergency postures. ... We intend to fight this, and we intend to win."

Sessions specifically singled out New York district court judge Jesse M. Furman, who ruled that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross could be questioned in an ongoing lawsuit concerning the legality of the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

Furman's decision, Sessions said, contradicts longstanding statutory provisions that protect certain executive branch discussions from disclosure, in order to encourage free and open deliberations by executive branch officials. The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, including several liberal states, are arguing in part that the White House added the citizenship question for political reasons.

The judge wants "to hold a trial over the inner workings of a Cabinet secretary’s mind," and inappropriately allow inquiry into the motivations for the Trump administration's decisions, Sessions said.

Furman's order, which was upheld by a New York federal appellate court, has been stayed by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The full Supreme Court is expected to decide the issue soon.

"Once we go down this road in American government, there is no turning back."

— Attorney General Jeff SessionsThe pending court challenges against the Trump administration's decision to add a citizenship question, legal experts tell Fox News, face an uphill battle not only because conservatives now command a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court, but also because traditionally it's been the White House's prerogative to decide whether to inquire about citizenship on the census.

Former President Barack Obama's administration didn't ask the question in the 2010 census amid fears it would unconstitutionally intimidate illegal immigrants into avoiding answering their census questions -- and thus not count toward population totals used to determine the number of seats each state receives in the House of Representatives. (The citizenship question was last asked on the census in 1950, but beginning in 1970, a citizenship question was asked in a long-form questionnaire sent to a relatively small number of households, alongside the main census. In 2010, there was no long-form questionnaire.)

Democrats would lose out because the citizenship question would affect predominately liberal districts, but that's not a legally sufficient objection, legal analysts say.

"There is no credible argument to be made that asking about citizenship subverts the Constitution and federal law," Chapman University law professor and constitutional law expert John Eastman told Fox News. "The recent move is simply to restore what had long been the case."

Eastman also told Fox News it would be legally permissible for the government to only count citizens for purposes of determining representation in the House of Representatives. However, other legal experts have contested that view, saying the Constitution demands that all "persons" be tallied -- not all citizens.

Judge orders that the DACA program be restartedVideoNevertheless, Sessions said Monday, liberal states and nonprofits have continued to push even longshot legal challenges in order to dig around in executive branch deliberations.

"This is not the first time we’ve had to seek emergency appellate intervention to stop outrageous discovery," Sessions said. Last year, the government filed a successful emergency motion to stop a district court's ruling that permitted plaintiffs to question a Department of Homeland Security counselor about advice relating to the contentious Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Sessions called that lower court ruling a "blatant violation of deliberative process and attorney-client privileges" and warned that it would have a "chilling effect" on deliberations in the White House.

He added, "Too many judges believe it is their right, their duty, to act upon their sympathies and policy preferences."

The attorney general blamed Obama for encouraging that approach. "One argument for activism was advocated openly by President Obama when he declared his judicial nominees must judge with 'empathy.' It is a seductive argument. But whatever empathy is, it’s more akin to emotion, bias, and politics than law," Sessions said.

"In the recent DACA litigation, for example, a judge last year told one of our DOJ litigators, 'You can’t come into court to espouse a position that is heartless,'" Sessions continued. "Not illegal. Not unlawful. Heartless. And later, after I responded in a speech that it isn’t a judge’s job to decide whether a policy is 'heartless,' the judge again scolded the DOJ lawyer by stating that I 'seem to think the courts cannot have an opinion.'"

That judge, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis, was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton. He ruled in March that a lawsuit seeking to preserve the federal DACA program can continue -- citing candidate Donald Trump's "racial slurs" and "epithets."

“One might reasonably infer,” Garaufis said in his politically charged ruling, “that a candidate who makes overtly bigoted statements on the campaign trail might be more likely to engage in similarly bigoted action in office.”

Separately, Sessions also said the 27 nationwide federal injunctions issued by individual judges during the Trump administration so far -- which brought temporary halts to high-profile policies like his ban on travel from Muslim-majority nations -- constitute an unprecedented "judicial encroachment."

"It is emphatically not the duty of the courts to manage the government or to pass judgment on every policy action the Executive branch takes," Sessions said. "In the first 175 years of this Republic, not a single judge issued one of these orders."

In his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court in September, then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh was asked by Louisiana Republican Sen. John Kennedy about the constitutionality of individual federal judges issuing nationwide injunctions against presidential action, a recent phenomenon. Kavanaugh demurred, saying he could not discuss potential pending issues before the Supreme Court.

Sessions noted that Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, who concurred in the high court's decision earlier this year to reinstate Trump's travel ban, wrote that such injunctions “take a toll on the federal court system—preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the executive branch.”

He added: "Executive branch officers do not work for the judiciary. We work for the president of the United States. Respect runs both ways."

The ambiguity of the contradiction is being overtly displayed now. The upcoming election has everyone in the crosshairs biting the bullet.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is set to issue findings of some of the core aspects of his investigation into the alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia shortly after the November midterm elections, Bloomberg reported.

The outlet, citing two anonymous U.S. officials, reported that Mueller is finalizing the conclusions related to the questions on whether President Trump’s campaign cooperated with Russia and whether he took any actions that could constitute obstruction of justice.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to an email from Fox News.

It’s possible that Mueller’s finding won’t be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments, according to Bloomberg. The findings will be provided to his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

Continue Reading Below

The Mueller team is currently facing increased scrutiny from both sides, with calls to either shut down the investigation or produce more indictments.

Rosenstein reportedly indicated he wants to end the probe as soon as possible, while president Trump is a frequent critic of the investigation, calling it a “witch hunt.”

Many speculate that if the probe continues any longer it may only lead to Trump shutting the investigation down himself.

Trump has recently floated the idea of replacing both Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, two men who hold positions that can influence the Mueller probe.

The president hasn’t yet spoken with Mueller concerning the potential collusion Russia. The Mueller team reportedly submitted written questions to the president, but the negotiations are still ongoing.

But it appears that the delivery of the findings won’t be the end of Mueller and the probe will continue in some form, according to Bloomberg.

The Mueller team is yet to finish the dealings with Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. He will be sentenced on Dec. 18.

COHEN SPOKE WITH MUELLER TEAM ABOUT TRUMP AND HIS BUSINESS DEALINGS WITH RUSSIA: REPORT

Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion, violations of campaign finance laws and bank fraud, reportedly spoke with the Mueller team concerning Trump and his business dealings in Russia.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, has also struck a plea deal that includes cooperation with Mueller amid his conviction of bank fraud and false tax returns, among other charges.

Lukas Mikelionis is a reporter for FoxNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @LukasMikelionis.

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump was more instrumental than previously known in scrapping plans to move the FBI headquarters out of Washington to the DC suburbs, according to newly released internal government emails.

President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogthosian)President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogthosian)The decision could have financial benefits for the President, whose own hotel is located a block away, critics say.

The documents were released Thursday by House Democrats in a letter to General Services Administrator Emily Murphy that suggests she misled Congress about the President's involvement.

Read the Democrats' letter and emails about President Trump and the FBI building"New documents provided to the Oversight Committee indicate that President Trump met personally with you, the FBI, and White House officials on January 24, 2018, where he was directly involved with the decision to abandon the long-term relocation plan and instead move ahead with the more expensive proposal to construct a new building on the same site, and thereby prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land," states the letter by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and other senior Democrats.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the "House Democrats have it all wrong."

"The President wanted to save the government money and also the FBI leadership did not want to move its headquarters," she told CNN in a statement.

A financial analysis conducted by the GSA's inspector general, however, concluded that constructing a new FBI building in downtown DC "would actually be more costly" than relocating the bureau.

The GSA did not respond to a request for comment.

The days following the White House meeting included efforts to make the decision to keep the FBI in Washington official, specifically referencing Trump's wishes.

Just one day after the meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, GSA's acting chief of staff, Brennan Hart, sent an email to Joseph Lai, a special assistant to the President, to emphasize the decision had been made not to relocate the FBI headquarters.

Days later, GSA's acting general counsel, Jack St. John, suggested the need to get "something in writing" from the FBI and Justice Department that solidified what had been agreed upon in the meeting with Trump.

What Democrats in Congress will do if they're in power after midtermsHart responded in an email, "Ideally, I think it would first recap the oval meeting with what POTUS directed everyone to do then ask Emily [Murphy] to execute POTUS's orders."

On January 28, Hart also sent an email to officials in the Office of Legislative Affairs discussing Trump's role that said, "GSA is going to hold our ground on funding source and that it is a demolition/new construction per the President's instructions."

Questions about Murphy's testimonyThe documents obtained by House Democrats are a preview of the kinds of oversight Democrats might escalate if they win the House majority in November.

Democrats have "serious concerns" about the move on the FBI plan to "replace it with a more costly plan to keep the current location, demolish the existing building, and construct a new facility on the same site," the letter states.

The have also raised questions about why the GSA chief was not more forthcoming with Congress about the White House's role. In April, Murphy did not disclose she'd met with the President about the project when asked by Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, during a congressional hearing if the President or anyone at the White House was involved in the discussions about the future of the FBI building.

GSA head silent on Trump's role in FBI building decision, watchdog saysThe General Services Administration's inspector general later said Murphy's testimony had been "incomplete."

"We found that Administrator Murphy's testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on April 17, 2018, was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project," the IG said in a report in August.

Democrats accuse Murphy in their letter of concealing valuable information from Congress.

"Your meetings with the White House came to light only after direct evidence emerged, including a photograph of you meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, along with other White House, Justice Department, and FBI officials," the Democrats wrote in the letter Thursday.

President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C.Democrats on the committee argue that Trump had a clear interest in the FBI property being developed before he was President, but after he became President and was not allowed to invest in the project, his interest became ensuring no other developer could buy the property, convert it and compete with the Trump hotel.

"Many years before becoming President, Donald Trump expressed interest in the FBI headquarters moving out of Washington, D.C. so he could acquire the land on Pennsylvania Avenue and redevelop the property, which is directly across the street from the Trump International Hotel. However, after he was sworn in as President—and became ineligible as a federal employee to obtain the property—he reportedly became 'dead opposed' to the government selling the property, which would have allowed commercial developers to compete directly with the Trump Hotel," Cummings and his colleagues wrote.

CNN's Greg Wallace contributed to this report.

Now this new development signals flurries of activity heating up on both sides of the isle, as the Congressional Elections approach.

Here is an example of an attempt by the Republicans to wrench the Mueller investigation from its DOJ:

"The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus is calling on Rod Rosenstein to step down as deputy attorney general, as lawmakers probe reports the Justice Department official once suggested wearing a "wire" to record President Trump."

It is so clearly transparent, that it makes one laugh until it hurts

Now this, just as predicted, the whole mess will be whitewashed, at least that is the opinion of Politico, :

MUELLER INVESTIGATION

Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointmentAnd be forewarned that the special counsel’s findings may never be made public.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/19/2018 05:20 AM EDTPresident Donald Trump's critics have spent the past 17 months anticipating what some expect will be among the most thrilling events of their lives: special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian 2016 election interference.

They may be in for a disappointment.

That’s the word POLITICO got from defense lawyers working on the Russia probe and more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case. The public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump — not to mention an explanation of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller sleuths.

Perhaps most unsatisfying: Mueller’s findings may never even see the light of day.

“That’s just the way this works,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “Mueller is a criminal investigator. He’s not government oversight, and he’s not a historian.”

All of this may sound like a buzzkill after two years of intense news coverage depicting a potential conspiracy between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign, plus the scores of tweets from the White House condemning the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt.”

The most reliable politics newsletter.

But government investigation experts are waving a giant yellow caution flag now to warn that Mueller’s no-comment mantra is unlikely to give way to a tell-all final report and an accompanying blitz of media interviews and public testimony on Capitol Hill.

“He won’t be a good witness,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth Starr now working as a senior fellow at the nonprofit R Street Institute. “His answers will be, ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe.’”

For starters, Mueller isn’t operating under the same ground rules as past high-profile government probes, including the Reagan-era investigation into Iranian arms sale and whether President Bill Clinton lied during a deposition about his extramarital affair with a White House intern. Those examinations worked under the guidelines of a post-Watergate law that expired in 1999 that required investigators to submit findings to Congress if they found impeachable offenses, a mandate that led to Starr’s salacious report that upended Clinton’s second term.

Mueller’s reporting mandate is much different. He must notify his Justice Department supervisor — currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — on his budgeting needs and all “significant events” made by his office, including indictments, guilty pleas and subpoenas.

When Mueller is finished, he must turn in a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” — essentially why he chose to bring charges against some people but not others. His reasoning, according to veterans of such investigations, could be as simple as “there wasn’t enough evidence” to support a winning court case.

Then, it will be up to DOJ leaders to make the politically turbo-charged decision of whether to make Mueller’s report public.

Government officials will first get a chance to scrub the special counsel’s findings for classified details, though, involving everything from foreign intelligence sources to information gleaned during grand jury testimony that the law forbids the government from disclosing.

They’ll also have to weigh the input from a number of powerful outside forces.

The White House, for one, has indicated it might try to butt into the proceedings. Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said earlier this summer that the White House had reserved the right to block the release of information in Mueller’s final report that might be covered through executive privilege. It’s unclear how salient that legal argument may be, but the president’s attorneys have been saying for months that a White House signoff will be needed because the Justice Department also falls inside the executive branch.

Congress is also primed to have a say. While Democratic leaders are hoping a return to power in the upcoming November midterms could grant them subpoena power to pry as much information as possible from the special counsel’s office, Republicans might try to restrict the release of certain details that might embarrass the president.

As for the crafting of the report itself, Mueller has significant leeway. He can theoretically be as expansive as he wants. But sources who have worked closely with Mueller during his lengthy career at the Justice Department say his by-the-books, conservative style is likely to win out, suggesting he might lean more toward saying less than more.

“It’s such a unique situation. He knows there are a lot of questions he needs to address for the sake of trying to satisfy a wide variety of interests and expectations,” said Paul McNulty, a former deputy attorney general from the George W. Bush administration who worked closely with Mueller at the Justice Department.

Mueller’s report will be landing in the shadow of former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to publicly explain his reasons for not prosecuting then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. The move was widely panned as a breach of DOJ protocol.

“That’s not Bob Mueller’s approach,” McNulty explained. “I’d be surprised if he did that in written form. I think he’s about, ‘Where are the facts before us?’”

The timing on the Mueller investigation final report — the special counsel's office declined comment for this report — remains unclear. While he’s under no deadline to complete his work, several sources tracking the investigation say the special counsel and his team appear eager to wrap up. “I’m sure he’s determined to get back to the rest of his life,” said Barrett, the Iran-Contra investigator who is now a law professor at St. John's University.

But several factors may still slow things down, including a potential protracted legal showdown over whether to force the president into a sit-down interview and what to do with leads that stem from the ongoing cooperation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Both men pleaded guilty this summer.

Longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone has also said he’s prepared for an indictment in the Mueller probe, which would kick-start an entirely new trial process.

“When your investigation is ongoing, it’s hard to write a final report,” said Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller aide who served as a deputy independent counsel in the investigation into George H.W. Bush administration officials fingered for accessing Clinton’s passport files during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Indeed, history offers a mixed bag on what to expect from Mueller’s end game. Several independent counsel investigations have concluded their work without any report at all, including the George W. Bush-era probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

And the two biggest cases since Watergate have been broken up into bite-sized pieces, with interim reports dribbled out while the wider probes continued. The Iran-Contra investigation published intermittent findings on procedural issues, such as how Congress granting immunity for testimony would impair criminal prosecution. The entire probe, however, lasted more than seven years, with a final report issued in August 1993, long after Reagan was out of the White House.

Clinton’s White House dealt with a series of independent counsel investigations, but none as troublesome as the one that started in January 1994 into the first family’s decades-old Whitewater land deals in Arkansas. The probe took multiple twists and expanded to cover several other topics. In 1997, Starr issued a report, affirming Clinton White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster had committed suicide. A year later, he published a report detailing allegations of illegal behavior tied to Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, which prompted the House to open impeachment proceedings.

A final report on Whitewater didn’t arrive until March 2002, more than eight years after the probe started and more than a year after the Democrat’s second term ended.

All of that history isn’t lost on Mueller

How Republicans could (barely) hang on to the HouseBy RACHAEL BADE

“He knows how these Office of Special Counsel investigations can drag on,” said McNulty, now president of Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. “He’s seen all that over the course of his career. I just know he’s the kind of person who’s decisive and if he thought that there was a way to not drag something out because it could be addressed appropriately, he’d have the determination to do that. He’s also not going to cut some corner just to be done.”

Past investigators have also struggled with how to handle the public release of their independent counsel reports.

In 2000, a nearly two-year investigation into Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman ended with a one-sentence statement clearing her of influence peddling charges. Independent counsel Ralph Lancaster’s final report was placed under a federal court seal and he opted not to ask for permission to publicize it.

“I had decided not to exercise my prosecutorial discretion to indict her and I didn’t see any sense in making it worse,” Lancaster said in a 2005 interview with lawinterview.com. “The press has never picked up on it. Nobody has asked to see it … which is fine by me.”

Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel in the Plame investigation, was under no obligation to write a report because of the specific guidelines behind his appointment. Testifying before Congress as his probe was ending, Fitzgerald defended the approach by noting that grand jury witnesses expect secrecy when they testify. He also noted that a 2007 public trial involving I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted for perjury, had revealed much of the investigation’s details.

“I think people learned a fair amount about what we did,” Fitzgerald said. “They didn’t learn everything. But if you’re talking about a public report, that was not provided for, and I actually believe and I’ve said it before, I think that’s appropriate.”

S

Mary McCord, a Georgetown University law professor and former DOJ official who helped oversee the FBI’s Russian meddling investigation before Mueller’s appointment, cautioned against heightened expectations around the special counsel’s final report.

“Don’t overread any of these facts that are in the world to suggest a quick wrap-up and everyone is going to get a chance to read it the next day,” she said. “It will probably be detailed because this material is detailed, but I don’t know that it will all be made public.”

Some of the central players in the Russia saga say they, too, have become resigned to not getting a complete set of answers out of Mueller’s work. “I assume there are going to be lots of details we’ll never learn, and lots of things that will never come to light,” said Robbie Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager.

But Mook added that Mueller’s efforts can be deemed a “success” if he answers just a few questions. For example, Mook wants to know whether and how the Russian government infiltrated the Trump campaign to influence the election outcome. He wants to know whether there was an effort in the White House or in the president’s orbit to cover up what happened.

“This is about big problems, not about small details,” he said. “I think we all need to step back and look at this less as a dramatic bit of intrigue and more as a real fundamental question of our national security.”

Its very likely , that the whitewash report will be similar to the. Special Comission , which came out with the Warren opinion on the John Kennedy assasination, where again a supposed covert National Security Agency was involved.

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump was more instrumental than previously known in scrapping plans to move the FBI headquarters out of Washington to the DC suburbs, according to newly released internal government emails.

President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogthosian)President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogthosian)The decision could have financial benefits for the President, whose own hotel is located a block away, critics say.

The documents were released Thursday by House Democrats in a letter to General Services Administrator Emily Murphy that suggests she misled Congress about the President's involvement.

Read the Democrats' letter and emails about President Trump and the FBI building"New documents provided to the Oversight Committee indicate that President Trump met personally with you, the FBI, and White House officials on January 24, 2018, where he was directly involved with the decision to abandon the long-term relocation plan and instead move ahead with the more expensive proposal to construct a new building on the same site, and thereby prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land," states the letter by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and other senior Democrats.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the "House Democrats have it all wrong."

"The President wanted to save the government money and also the FBI leadership did not want to move its headquarters," she told CNN in a statement.

A financial analysis conducted by the GSA's inspector general, however, concluded that constructing a new FBI building in downtown DC "would actually be more costly" than relocating the bureau.

The GSA did not respond to a request for comment.

The days following the White House meeting included efforts to make the decision to keep the FBI in Washington official, specifically referencing Trump's wishes.

Just one day after the meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, GSA's acting chief of staff, Brennan Hart, sent an email to Joseph Lai, a special assistant to the President, to emphasize the decision had been made not to relocate the FBI headquarters.

Days later, GSA's acting general counsel, Jack St. John, suggested the need to get "something in writing" from the FBI and Justice Department that solidified what had been agreed upon in the meeting with Trump.

What Democrats in Congress will do if they're in power after midtermsHart responded in an email, "Ideally, I think it would first recap the oval meeting with what POTUS directed everyone to do then ask Emily [Murphy] to execute POTUS's orders."

On January 28, Hart also sent an email to officials in the Office of Legislative Affairs discussing Trump's role that said, "GSA is going to hold our ground on funding source and that it is a demolition/new construction per the President's instructions."

Questions about Murphy's testimonyThe documents obtained by House Democrats are a preview of the kinds of oversight Democrats might escalate if they win the House majority in November.

Democrats have "serious concerns" about the move on the FBI plan to "replace it with a more costly plan to keep the current location, demolish the existing building, and construct a new facility on the same site," the letter states.

The have also raised questions about why the GSA chief was not more forthcoming with Congress about the White House's role. In April, Murphy did not disclose she'd met with the President about the project when asked by Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, during a congressional hearing if the President or anyone at the White House was involved in the discussions about the future of the FBI building.

GSA head silent on Trump's role in FBI building decision, watchdog saysThe General Services Administration's inspector general later said Murphy's testimony had been "incomplete."

"We found that Administrator Murphy's testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on April 17, 2018, was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project," the IG said in a report in August.

Democrats accuse Murphy in their letter of concealing valuable information from Congress.

"Your meetings with the White House came to light only after direct evidence emerged, including a photograph of you meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, along with other White House, Justice Department, and FBI officials," the Democrats wrote in the letter Thursday.

President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C.Democrats on the committee argue that Trump had a clear interest in the FBI property being developed before he was President, but after he became President and was not allowed to invest in the project, his interest became ensuring no other developer could buy the property, convert it and compete with the Trump hotel.

"Many years before becoming President, Donald Trump expressed interest in the FBI headquarters moving out of Washington, D.C. so he could acquire the land on Pennsylvania Avenue and redevelop the property, which is directly across the street from the Trump International Hotel. However, after he was sworn in as President—and became ineligible as a federal employee to obtain the property—he reportedly became 'dead opposed' to the government selling the property, which would have allowed commercial developers to compete directly with the Trump Hotel," Cummings and his colleagues wrote.

CNN's Greg Wallace contributed to this report.

Now this new development signals flurries of activity heating up on both sides of the isle, as the Congressional Elections approach.

Here is an example of an attempt by the Republicans to wrench the Mueller investigation from its DOJ:

"The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus is calling on Rod Rosenstein to step down as deputy attorney general, as lawmakers probe reports the Justice Department official once suggested wearing a "wire" to record President Trump."

It is so clearly transparent, that it makes one laugh until it hurts

Now this, just as predicted, the whole mess will be whitewashed, at least that is the opinion of Politico, :

MUELLER INVESTIGATION

Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointmentAnd be forewarned that the special counsel’s findings may never be made public.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/19/2018 05:20 AM EDTPresident Donald Trump's critics have spent the past 17 months anticipating what some expect will be among the most thrilling events of their lives: special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian 2016 election interference.

They may be in for a disappointment.

That’s the word POLITICO got from defense lawyers working on the Russia probe and more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case. The public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump — not to mention an explanation of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller sleuths.

Perhaps most unsatisfying: Mueller’s findings may never even see the light of day.

“That’s just the way this works,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “Mueller is a criminal investigator. He’s not government oversight, and he’s not a historian.”

All of this may sound like a buzzkill after two years of intense news coverage depicting a potential conspiracy between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign, plus the scores of tweets from the White House condemning the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt.”

The most reliable politics newsletter.

But government investigation experts are waving a giant yellow caution flag now to warn that Mueller’s no-comment mantra is unlikely to give way to a tell-all final report and an accompanying blitz of media interviews and public testimony on Capitol Hill.

“He won’t be a good witness,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth Starr now working as a senior fellow at the nonprofit R Street Institute. “His answers will be, ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe.’”

For starters, Mueller isn’t operating under the same ground rules as past high-profile government probes, including the Reagan-era investigation into Iranian arms sale and whether President Bill Clinton lied during a deposition about his extramarital affair with a White House intern. Those examinations worked under the guidelines of a post-Watergate law that expired in 1999 that required investigators to submit findings to Congress if they found impeachable offenses, a mandate that led to Starr’s salacious report that upended Clinton’s second term.

Mueller’s reporting mandate is much different. He must notify his Justice Department supervisor — currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — on his budgeting needs and all “significant events” made by his office, including indictments, guilty pleas and subpoenas.

When Mueller is finished, he must turn in a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” — essentially why he chose to bring charges against some people but not others. His reasoning, according to veterans of such investigations, could be as simple as “there wasn’t enough evidence” to support a winning court case.

Then, it will be up to DOJ leaders to make the politically turbo-charged decision of whether to make Mueller’s report public.

Government officials will first get a chance to scrub the special counsel’s findings for classified details, though, involving everything from foreign intelligence sources to information gleaned during grand jury testimony that the law forbids the government from disclosing.

They’ll also have to weigh the input from a number of powerful outside forces.

The White House, for one, has indicated it might try to butt into the proceedings. Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said earlier this summer that the White House had reserved the right to block the release of information in Mueller’s final report that might be covered through executive privilege. It’s unclear how salient that legal argument may be, but the president’s attorneys have been saying for months that a White House signoff will be needed because the Justice Department also falls inside the executive branch.

Congress is also primed to have a say. While Democratic leaders are hoping a return to power in the upcoming November midterms could grant them subpoena power to pry as much information as possible from the special counsel’s office, Republicans might try to restrict the release of certain details that might embarrass the president.

As for the crafting of the report itself, Mueller has significant leeway. He can theoretically be as expansive as he wants. But sources who have worked closely with Mueller during his lengthy career at the Justice Department say his by-the-books, conservative style is likely to win out, suggesting he might lean more toward saying less than more.

“It’s such a unique situation. He knows there are a lot of questions he needs to address for the sake of trying to satisfy a wide variety of interests and expectations,” said Paul McNulty, a former deputy attorney general from the George W. Bush administration who worked closely with Mueller at the Justice Department.

Mueller’s report will be landing in the shadow of former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to publicly explain his reasons for not prosecuting then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. The move was widely panned as a breach of DOJ protocol.

“That’s not Bob Mueller’s approach,” McNulty explained. “I’d be surprised if he did that in written form. I think he’s about, ‘Where are the facts before us?’”

The timing on the Mueller investigation final report — the special counsel's office declined comment for this report — remains unclear. While he’s under no deadline to complete his work, several sources tracking the investigation say the special counsel and his team appear eager to wrap up. “I’m sure he’s determined to get back to the rest of his life,” said Barrett, the Iran-Contra investigator who is now a law professor at St. John's University.

But several factors may still slow things down, including a potential protracted legal showdown over whether to force the president into a sit-down interview and what to do with leads that stem from the ongoing cooperation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Both men pleaded guilty this summer.

Longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone has also said he’s prepared for an indictment in the Mueller probe, which would kick-start an entirely new trial process.

“When your investigation is ongoing, it’s hard to write a final report,” said Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller aide who served as a deputy independent counsel in the investigation into George H.W. Bush administration officials fingered for accessing Clinton’s passport files during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Indeed, history offers a mixed bag on what to expect from Mueller’s end game. Several independent counsel investigations have concluded their work without any report at all, including the George W. Bush-era probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

And the two biggest cases since Watergate have been broken up into bite-sized pieces, with interim reports dribbled out while the wider probes continued. The Iran-Contra investigation published intermittent findings on procedural issues, such as how Congress granting immunity for testimony would impair criminal prosecution. The entire probe, however, lasted more than seven years, with a final report issued in August 1993, long after Reagan was out of the White House.

Clinton’s White House dealt with a series of independent counsel investigations, but none as troublesome as the one that started in January 1994 into the first family’s decades-old Whitewater land deals in Arkansas. The probe took multiple twists and expanded to cover several other topics. In 1997, Starr issued a report, affirming Clinton White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster had committed suicide. A year later, he published a report detailing allegations of illegal behavior tied to Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, which prompted the House to open impeachment proceedings.

A final report on Whitewater didn’t arrive until March 2002, more than eight years after the probe started and more than a year after the Democrat’s second term ended.

All of that history isn’t lost on Mueller

How Republicans could (barely) hang on to the HouseBy RACHAEL BADE

“He knows how these Office of Special Counsel investigations can drag on,” said McNulty, now president of Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. “He’s seen all that over the course of his career. I just know he’s the kind of person who’s decisive and if he thought that there was a way to not drag something out because it could be addressed appropriately, he’d have the determination to do that. He’s also not going to cut some corner just to be done.”

Past investigators have also struggled with how to handle the public release of their independent counsel reports.

In 2000, a nearly two-year investigation into Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman ended with a one-sentence statement clearing her of influence peddling charges. Independent counsel Ralph Lancaster’s final report was placed under a federal court seal and he opted not to ask for permission to publicize it.

“I had decided not to exercise my prosecutorial discretion to indict her and I didn’t see any sense in making it worse,” Lancaster said in a 2005 interview with lawinterview.com. “The press has never picked up on it. Nobody has asked to see it … which is fine by me.”

Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel in the Plame investigation, was under no obligation to write a report because of the specific guidelines behind his appointment. Testifying before Congress as his probe was ending, Fitzgerald defended the approach by noting that grand jury witnesses expect secrecy when they testify. He also noted that a 2007 public trial involving I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted for perjury, had revealed much of the investigation’s details.

“I think people learned a fair amount about what we did,” Fitzgerald said. “They didn’t learn everything. But if you’re talking about a public report, that was not provided for, and I actually believe and I’ve said it before, I think that’s appropriate.”

S

Mary McCord, a Georgetown University law professor and former DOJ official who helped oversee the FBI’s Russian meddling investigation before Mueller’s appointment, cautioned against heightened expectations around the special counsel’s final report.

“Don’t overread any of these facts that are in the world to suggest a quick wrap-up and everyone is going to get a chance to read it the next day,” she said. “It will probably be detailed because this material is detailed, but I don’t know that it will all be made public.”

Some of the central players in the Russia saga say they, too, have become resigned to not getting a complete set of answers out of Mueller’s work. “I assume there are going to be lots of details we’ll never learn, and lots of things that will never come to light,” said Robbie Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager.

But Mook added that Mueller’s efforts can be deemed a “success” if he answers just a few questions. For example, Mook wants to know whether and how the Russian government infiltrated the Trump campaign to influence the election outcome. He wants to know whether there was an effort in the White House or in the president’s orbit to cover up what happened.

“This is about big problems, not about small details,” he said. “I think we all need to step back and look at this less as a dramatic bit of intrigue and more as a real fundamental question of our national security.”

Its very likely , that the whitewash report will be similar to the. Special Comission , which came out with the Warren opinion on the John Kennedy assasination, where again a supposed covert National Security Agency was involved.

New:

JUSTICE DEPARTMENTRussian woman charged with attempted meddling in upcoming U.S. midtermsElena Khusyaynova works for a company owned by a Putin pal who has already been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller's team.by Pete Williams and Tom Winter / Oct. 19, 2018 / 2:32 PM ET / Updated 5:02 PM ET

SHARE THIS —ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A Russian woman who works for an oligarch close to Russian President Vladamir Putin has been charged with attempting to meddle in the 2018 midterm election.

The charges, filed Friday in the Eastern District of Virginia, accuse Elena A. Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg with using social media platforms to create thousands of social media and e-mail accounts — appearing to be from people in the U.S. — to "create and amplify divisive social media and political content." The case is not being brought by special counsel Robert Mueller's team.

Among the other topics were gun control, gay rights, the women's march and the NFL national anthem debate. They also keyed off specific events, including the Las Vegas shooting and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The content adopted several viewpoints, not just one, court documents said.

Among the politicians attacked were John McCain, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell and former President Barack Obama.

Khusyaynova's operation also targeted Mueller, pushing out an article published by the right-wing website WorldNetDaily that was titled, "The 8 Dirtiest Scandals of Robert Mueller No One Is Talking About," the criminal complaint said.

However, one account seemed to support Mueller. "Dear @realDonaldTrump: The DOJ indicted 13 Russian nationals at the Internet Research Agency for violating federal criminal law to help your campaign and hurt other campaigns," a Twitter account allegedly belonging to the Russian group, "@JemiSHaaZzz", posted on February 16. "Still think this Russia thing is a hoax and a witch hunt? Because lots of witches just got indicted."

The influence campaign worked to create "political intensity through supporting radical groups" and to "aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population," according to federal prosecutors.

Court documents include photos of phony "memes" planted in this Russian effort.

A meme allegedly created by a Russian influence campaign involving Elena A. Khusyaynova who was charged Oct. 19, 2018 in federal court with attempted meddling in the 2018 midterm elections.Department of Justice"The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions," said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Prosecutors said Khusyaynova, 44, is the chief accountant for a Russian umbrella effort called Project Lakhta, funded by a Russian oligarch whose Concord companies were named in the July indictment brought by Mueller involving attempted meddling in the 2016 election.

The complaint says that Concord spent approximately $12 million U.S. dollars for their efforts during 2016 and in February of 2017 they allegedly spent $1.2 million alone on such things as social media network advertisements and IT expenses.

Concord Management is owned by Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, also known as "Putin's chef," who is closely linked to the Russian president. It provides food services at the Kremlin.

Mueller has indicted Prighozin as part of his probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller's office indicted Prighozin and 12 other Russian nationals in February on charges including interference in the 2016 presidential election.

A person votes during the New York primary on Sept. 13, 2018. Justin Lane / EPAIn June, Mueller said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington that the government believes foreign "individuals and entities" are continuing to "engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment." The filing sought to protect evidence requested by Prighozin's company.

On Friday, the Justice Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security released a joint statement ahead of the announcement of Khusyaynova's indictment that said "foreign interference in U.S. elections is a threat to our democracy and preventing this interference is a top priority of the Federal Government."

"We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections," the statement said.

"Currently, we do not have any evidence of a compromise."

Meaning procedure is tied to degree of probability , or preponderemce. The Russians play by a different criteria .That is a problem.

"Currently, we do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections."

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US is pulling out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a decades-old agreement that has drawn the ire of the President.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years," Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One to leave Nevada following a campaign rally.

Trump casts Democrats as &apos;angry, ruthless, unhinged mob&apos; in Nevada ahead of midterm elections Trump casts Democrats as 'angry, ruthless, unhinged mob' in Nevada ahead of midterm elections"And I don't know why President Obama didn't negotiate or pull out. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to," he said. "We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we've honored the agreement.

"But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we're going to terminate the agreement. We're gonna pull out," he said of the agreement, which was signed in December 1987 by former President Ronald Reagan and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachecv.

The Trump Administration has said repeatedly that Russia has violated the treaty.

Administration officials believe the treaty has put the US at a disadvantage because China does not face any constraints on developing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in the Pacific and does not allow the US to develop new weapons.

National Security Adviser John Bolton is expected to discuss the treaty with Russian officials on his trip next week

The implications are extremely threatening here, underwriting an earlier threat of application of force, the beginning of lighting a fuse unto an already overwrought political stalemate.

The dialectical re-application between reality, expectation and futility in handwaving-and gesturing on cue in light of newly developed signs.

The moderates should exert a strong counterbalance to die hard radical conservatives: now is the time to reset lost boundaries.

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump was more instrumental than previously known in scrapping plans to move the FBI headquarters out of Washington to the DC suburbs, according to newly released internal government emails.

President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogthosian)President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Bogthosian)The decision could have financial benefits for the President, whose own hotel is located a block away, critics say.

The documents were released Thursday by House Democrats in a letter to General Services Administrator Emily Murphy that suggests she misled Congress about the President's involvement.

Read the Democrats' letter and emails about President Trump and the FBI building"New documents provided to the Oversight Committee indicate that President Trump met personally with you, the FBI, and White House officials on January 24, 2018, where he was directly involved with the decision to abandon the long-term relocation plan and instead move ahead with the more expensive proposal to construct a new building on the same site, and thereby prevent Trump Hotel competitors from acquiring the land," states the letter by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and other senior Democrats.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said that the "House Democrats have it all wrong."

"The President wanted to save the government money and also the FBI leadership did not want to move its headquarters," she told CNN in a statement.

A financial analysis conducted by the GSA's inspector general, however, concluded that constructing a new FBI building in downtown DC "would actually be more costly" than relocating the bureau.

The GSA did not respond to a request for comment.

The days following the White House meeting included efforts to make the decision to keep the FBI in Washington official, specifically referencing Trump's wishes.

Just one day after the meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, GSA's acting chief of staff, Brennan Hart, sent an email to Joseph Lai, a special assistant to the President, to emphasize the decision had been made not to relocate the FBI headquarters.

Days later, GSA's acting general counsel, Jack St. John, suggested the need to get "something in writing" from the FBI and Justice Department that solidified what had been agreed upon in the meeting with Trump.

What Democrats in Congress will do if they're in power after midtermsHart responded in an email, "Ideally, I think it would first recap the oval meeting with what POTUS directed everyone to do then ask Emily [Murphy] to execute POTUS's orders."

On January 28, Hart also sent an email to officials in the Office of Legislative Affairs discussing Trump's role that said, "GSA is going to hold our ground on funding source and that it is a demolition/new construction per the President's instructions."

Questions about Murphy's testimonyThe documents obtained by House Democrats are a preview of the kinds of oversight Democrats might escalate if they win the House majority in November.

Democrats have "serious concerns" about the move on the FBI plan to "replace it with a more costly plan to keep the current location, demolish the existing building, and construct a new facility on the same site," the letter states.

The have also raised questions about why the GSA chief was not more forthcoming with Congress about the White House's role. In April, Murphy did not disclose she'd met with the President about the project when asked by Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, during a congressional hearing if the President or anyone at the White House was involved in the discussions about the future of the FBI building.

GSA head silent on Trump's role in FBI building decision, watchdog saysThe General Services Administration's inspector general later said Murphy's testimony had been "incomplete."

"We found that Administrator Murphy's testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee on April 17, 2018, was incomplete and may have left the misleading impression that she had no discussions with the President or senior White House officials in the decision-making process about the project," the IG said in a report in August.

Democrats accuse Murphy in their letter of concealing valuable information from Congress.

"Your meetings with the White House came to light only after direct evidence emerged, including a photograph of you meeting with President Trump in the Oval Office, along with other White House, Justice Department, and FBI officials," the Democrats wrote in the letter Thursday.

President Donald J. Trump meets with White House Legislative Affairs staffers, Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2018, at the White House in Washington, D.C.Democrats on the committee argue that Trump had a clear interest in the FBI property being developed before he was President, but after he became President and was not allowed to invest in the project, his interest became ensuring no other developer could buy the property, convert it and compete with the Trump hotel.

"Many years before becoming President, Donald Trump expressed interest in the FBI headquarters moving out of Washington, D.C. so he could acquire the land on Pennsylvania Avenue and redevelop the property, which is directly across the street from the Trump International Hotel. However, after he was sworn in as President—and became ineligible as a federal employee to obtain the property—he reportedly became 'dead opposed' to the government selling the property, which would have allowed commercial developers to compete directly with the Trump Hotel," Cummings and his colleagues wrote.

CNN's Greg Wallace contributed to this report.

Now this new development signals flurries of activity heating up on both sides of the isle, as the Congressional Elections approach.

Here is an example of an attempt by the Republicans to wrench the Mueller investigation from its DOJ:

"The chairman of the House Freedom Caucus is calling on Rod Rosenstein to step down as deputy attorney general, as lawmakers probe reports the Justice Department official once suggested wearing a "wire" to record President Trump."

It is so clearly transparent, that it makes one laugh until it hurts

Now this, just as predicted, the whole mess will be whitewashed, at least that is the opinion of Politico, :

MUELLER INVESTIGATION

Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointmentAnd be forewarned that the special counsel’s findings may never be made public.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/19/2018 05:20 AM EDTPresident Donald Trump's critics have spent the past 17 months anticipating what some expect will be among the most thrilling events of their lives: special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on Russian 2016 election interference.

They may be in for a disappointment.

That’s the word POLITICO got from defense lawyers working on the Russia probe and more than 15 former government officials with investigation experience spanning Watergate to the 2016 election case. The public, they say, shouldn’t expect a comprehensive and presidency-wrecking account of Kremlin meddling and alleged obstruction of justice by Trump — not to mention an explanation of the myriad subplots that have bedeviled lawmakers, journalists and amateur Mueller sleuths.

Perhaps most unsatisfying: Mueller’s findings may never even see the light of day.

“That’s just the way this works,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “Mueller is a criminal investigator. He’s not government oversight, and he’s not a historian.”

All of this may sound like a buzzkill after two years of intense news coverage depicting a potential conspiracy between the Kremlin and Trump’s campaign, plus the scores of tweets from the White House condemning the Mueller probe as a “witch hunt.”

The most reliable politics newsletter.

But government investigation experts are waving a giant yellow caution flag now to warn that Mueller’s no-comment mantra is unlikely to give way to a tell-all final report and an accompanying blitz of media interviews and public testimony on Capitol Hill.

“He won’t be a good witness,” said Paul Rosenzweig, a former senior counsel to independent counsel Kenneth Starr now working as a senior fellow at the nonprofit R Street Institute. “His answers will be, ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘maybe.’”

For starters, Mueller isn’t operating under the same ground rules as past high-profile government probes, including the Reagan-era investigation into Iranian arms sale and whether President Bill Clinton lied during a deposition about his extramarital affair with a White House intern. Those examinations worked under the guidelines of a post-Watergate law that expired in 1999 that required investigators to submit findings to Congress if they found impeachable offenses, a mandate that led to Starr’s salacious report that upended Clinton’s second term.

Mueller’s reporting mandate is much different. He must notify his Justice Department supervisor — currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein — on his budgeting needs and all “significant events” made by his office, including indictments, guilty pleas and subpoenas.

When Mueller is finished, he must turn in a “confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions” — essentially why he chose to bring charges against some people but not others. His reasoning, according to veterans of such investigations, could be as simple as “there wasn’t enough evidence” to support a winning court case.

Then, it will be up to DOJ leaders to make the politically turbo-charged decision of whether to make Mueller’s report public.

Government officials will first get a chance to scrub the special counsel’s findings for classified details, though, involving everything from foreign intelligence sources to information gleaned during grand jury testimony that the law forbids the government from disclosing.

They’ll also have to weigh the input from a number of powerful outside forces.

The White House, for one, has indicated it might try to butt into the proceedings. Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani said earlier this summer that the White House had reserved the right to block the release of information in Mueller’s final report that might be covered through executive privilege. It’s unclear how salient that legal argument may be, but the president’s attorneys have been saying for months that a White House signoff will be needed because the Justice Department also falls inside the executive branch.

Congress is also primed to have a say. While Democratic leaders are hoping a return to power in the upcoming November midterms could grant them subpoena power to pry as much information as possible from the special counsel’s office, Republicans might try to restrict the release of certain details that might embarrass the president.

As for the crafting of the report itself, Mueller has significant leeway. He can theoretically be as expansive as he wants. But sources who have worked closely with Mueller during his lengthy career at the Justice Department say his by-the-books, conservative style is likely to win out, suggesting he might lean more toward saying less than more.

“It’s such a unique situation. He knows there are a lot of questions he needs to address for the sake of trying to satisfy a wide variety of interests and expectations,” said Paul McNulty, a former deputy attorney general from the George W. Bush administration who worked closely with Mueller at the Justice Department.

Mueller’s report will be landing in the shadow of former FBI Director James Comey’s controversial decision to publicly explain his reasons for not prosecuting then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server during her time as secretary of state. The move was widely panned as a breach of DOJ protocol.

“That’s not Bob Mueller’s approach,” McNulty explained. “I’d be surprised if he did that in written form. I think he’s about, ‘Where are the facts before us?’”

The timing on the Mueller investigation final report — the special counsel's office declined comment for this report — remains unclear. While he’s under no deadline to complete his work, several sources tracking the investigation say the special counsel and his team appear eager to wrap up. “I’m sure he’s determined to get back to the rest of his life,” said Barrett, the Iran-Contra investigator who is now a law professor at St. John's University.

But several factors may still slow things down, including a potential protracted legal showdown over whether to force the president into a sit-down interview and what to do with leads that stem from the ongoing cooperation of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen. Both men pleaded guilty this summer.

Longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone has also said he’s prepared for an indictment in the Mueller probe, which would kick-start an entirely new trial process.

“When your investigation is ongoing, it’s hard to write a final report,” said Michael Zeldin, a former Mueller aide who served as a deputy independent counsel in the investigation into George H.W. Bush administration officials fingered for accessing Clinton’s passport files during the 1992 presidential campaign.

Indeed, history offers a mixed bag on what to expect from Mueller’s end game. Several independent counsel investigations have concluded their work without any report at all, including the George W. Bush-era probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

And the two biggest cases since Watergate have been broken up into bite-sized pieces, with interim reports dribbled out while the wider probes continued. The Iran-Contra investigation published intermittent findings on procedural issues, such as how Congress granting immunity for testimony would impair criminal prosecution. The entire probe, however, lasted more than seven years, with a final report issued in August 1993, long after Reagan was out of the White House.

Clinton’s White House dealt with a series of independent counsel investigations, but none as troublesome as the one that started in January 1994 into the first family’s decades-old Whitewater land deals in Arkansas. The probe took multiple twists and expanded to cover several other topics. In 1997, Starr issued a report, affirming Clinton White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster had committed suicide. A year later, he published a report detailing allegations of illegal behavior tied to Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky, which prompted the House to open impeachment proceedings.

A final report on Whitewater didn’t arrive until March 2002, more than eight years after the probe started and more than a year after the Democrat’s second term ended.

All of that history isn’t lost on Mueller

How Republicans could (barely) hang on to the HouseBy RACHAEL BADE

“He knows how these Office of Special Counsel investigations can drag on,” said McNulty, now president of Grove City College in western Pennsylvania. “He’s seen all that over the course of his career. I just know he’s the kind of person who’s decisive and if he thought that there was a way to not drag something out because it could be addressed appropriately, he’d have the determination to do that. He’s also not going to cut some corner just to be done.”

Past investigators have also struggled with how to handle the public release of their independent counsel reports.

In 2000, a nearly two-year investigation into Clinton Labor Secretary Alexis Herman ended with a one-sentence statement clearing her of influence peddling charges. Independent counsel Ralph Lancaster’s final report was placed under a federal court seal and he opted not to ask for permission to publicize it.

“I had decided not to exercise my prosecutorial discretion to indict her and I didn’t see any sense in making it worse,” Lancaster said in a 2005 interview with lawinterview.com. “The press has never picked up on it. Nobody has asked to see it … which is fine by me.”

Patrick Fitzgerald, the independent counsel in the Plame investigation, was under no obligation to write a report because of the specific guidelines behind his appointment. Testifying before Congress as his probe was ending, Fitzgerald defended the approach by noting that grand jury witnesses expect secrecy when they testify. He also noted that a 2007 public trial involving I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convicted for perjury, had revealed much of the investigation’s details.

“I think people learned a fair amount about what we did,” Fitzgerald said. “They didn’t learn everything. But if you’re talking about a public report, that was not provided for, and I actually believe and I’ve said it before, I think that’s appropriate.”

S

Mary McCord, a Georgetown University law professor and former DOJ official who helped oversee the FBI’s Russian meddling investigation before Mueller’s appointment, cautioned against heightened expectations around the special counsel’s final report.

“Don’t overread any of these facts that are in the world to suggest a quick wrap-up and everyone is going to get a chance to read it the next day,” she said. “It will probably be detailed because this material is detailed, but I don’t know that it will all be made public.”

Some of the central players in the Russia saga say they, too, have become resigned to not getting a complete set of answers out of Mueller’s work. “I assume there are going to be lots of details we’ll never learn, and lots of things that will never come to light,” said Robbie Mook, Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager.

But Mook added that Mueller’s efforts can be deemed a “success” if he answers just a few questions. For example, Mook wants to know whether and how the Russian government infiltrated the Trump campaign to influence the election outcome. He wants to know whether there was an effort in the White House or in the president’s orbit to cover up what happened.

“This is about big problems, not about small details,” he said. “I think we all need to step back and look at this less as a dramatic bit of intrigue and more as a real fundamental question of our national security.”

Its very likely , that the whitewash report will be similar to the. Special Comission , which came out with the Warren opinion on the John Kennedy assasination, where again a supposed covert National Security Agency was involved.

New:

JUSTICE DEPARTMENTRussian woman charged with attempted meddling in upcoming U.S. midtermsElena Khusyaynova works for a company owned by a Putin pal who has already been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller's team.by Pete Williams and Tom Winter / Oct. 19, 2018 / 2:32 PM ET / Updated 5:02 PM ET

SHARE THIS —ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A Russian woman who works for an oligarch close to Russian President Vladamir Putin has been charged with attempting to meddle in the 2018 midterm election.

The charges, filed Friday in the Eastern District of Virginia, accuse Elena A. Khusyaynova of St. Petersburg with using social media platforms to create thousands of social media and e-mail accounts — appearing to be from people in the U.S. — to "create and amplify divisive social media and political content." The case is not being brought by special counsel Robert Mueller's team.

Among the other topics were gun control, gay rights, the women's march and the NFL national anthem debate. They also keyed off specific events, including the Las Vegas shooting and the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The content adopted several viewpoints, not just one, court documents said.

Among the politicians attacked were John McCain, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Mitch McConnell and former President Barack Obama.

Khusyaynova's operation also targeted Mueller, pushing out an article published by the right-wing website WorldNetDaily that was titled, "The 8 Dirtiest Scandals of Robert Mueller No One Is Talking About," the criminal complaint said.

However, one account seemed to support Mueller. "Dear @realDonaldTrump: The DOJ indicted 13 Russian nationals at the Internet Research Agency for violating federal criminal law to help your campaign and hurt other campaigns," a Twitter account allegedly belonging to the Russian group, "@JemiSHaaZzz", posted on February 16. "Still think this Russia thing is a hoax and a witch hunt? Because lots of witches just got indicted."

The influence campaign worked to create "political intensity through supporting radical groups" and to "aggravate the conflict between minorities and the rest of the population," according to federal prosecutors.

Court documents include photos of phony "memes" planted in this Russian effort.

A meme allegedly created by a Russian influence campaign involving Elena A. Khusyaynova who was charged Oct. 19, 2018 in federal court with attempted meddling in the 2018 midterm elections.Department of Justice"The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions," said G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.

Prosecutors said Khusyaynova, 44, is the chief accountant for a Russian umbrella effort called Project Lakhta, funded by a Russian oligarch whose Concord companies were named in the July indictment brought by Mueller involving attempted meddling in the 2016 election.

The complaint says that Concord spent approximately $12 million U.S. dollars for their efforts during 2016 and in February of 2017 they allegedly spent $1.2 million alone on such things as social media network advertisements and IT expenses.

Concord Management is owned by Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin, also known as "Putin's chef," who is closely linked to the Russian president. It provides food services at the Kremlin.

Mueller has indicted Prighozin as part of his probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Mueller's office indicted Prighozin and 12 other Russian nationals in February on charges including interference in the 2016 presidential election.

A person votes during the New York primary on Sept. 13, 2018. Justin Lane / EPAIn June, Mueller said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Washington that the government believes foreign "individuals and entities" are continuing to "engage in interference operations like those charged in the present indictment." The filing sought to protect evidence requested by Prighozin's company.

On Friday, the Justice Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security released a joint statement ahead of the announcement of Khusyaynova's indictment that said "foreign interference in U.S. elections is a threat to our democracy and preventing this interference is a top priority of the Federal Government."

"We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies. These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections," the statement said.

"Currently, we do not have any evidence of a compromise."

Meaning procedure is tied to degree of probability , or preponderemce. The Russians play by a different criteria .That is a problem.

"Currently, we do not have any evidence of a compromise or disruption of infrastructure that would enable adversaries to prevent voting, change vote counts or disrupt our ability to tally votes in the midterm elections."

Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump announced Saturday that the US is pulling out of the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty with Russia, a decades-old agreement that has drawn the ire of the President.

"Russia has violated the agreement. They've been violating it for many years," Trump told reporters before boarding Air Force One to leave Nevada following a campaign rally.

Trump casts Democrats as &apos;angry, ruthless, unhinged mob&apos; in Nevada ahead of midterm elections Trump casts Democrats as 'angry, ruthless, unhinged mob' in Nevada ahead of midterm elections"And I don't know why President Obama didn't negotiate or pull out. And we're not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we're not allowed to," he said. "We're the ones that have stayed in the agreement and we've honored the agreement.

"But Russia has not, unfortunately, honored the agreement. So we're going to terminate the agreement. We're gonna pull out," he said of the agreement, which was signed in December 1987 by former President Ronald Reagan and former USSR President Mikhail Gorbachecv.

The Trump Administration has said repeatedly that Russia has violated the treaty.

Administration officials believe the treaty has put the US at a disadvantage because China does not face any constraints on developing intermediate-range nuclear missiles in the Pacific and does not allow the US to develop new weapons.

National Security Adviser John Bolton is expected to discuss the treaty with Russian officials on his trip next week

The implications are extremely threatening here, underwriting an earlier threat of application of force, the beginning of lighting a fuse unto an already overwrought political stalemate.

The dialectical re-application between reality, expectation and futility in handwaving-and gesturing on cue in light of newly developed signs.

The moderates should exert a strong counterbalance to die hard radical conservatives: now is the time to reset lost boundaries.

.

New: going in to the primaries. Trump is way ahead of Obama when he faced the primaries, with his Republican base supporting him 90% approval.

Another front : Putin warned today that Trump's insistence on abrogating the nuclear treaty signed by Reagan and Gorbachev is terribly misgiven and he advises Trump not to.

Is the hope for the success of mutual commercial interest replacing the threatening tattle of the hammer and sickle but a fading wishful memory for a newly formed peaceful world? Or is it, that the supposed payout of benefits to the Soviets didn't measure up to expectations. What is it? Do not the masses pay the enormous profits to the leading oligarchs a politically dangerous game, whose floodgates predict more conflict and social insecurity and unrest? Are people still enamored of the politically correct Clinton, who may have been better postured to deal with both May of Britain and Merkle of Germany, on basis of female solidatery?

Is it the case resurgent male political dominance, more of a uniting force?

Let's watch and see, and try to make sense out of this undercurrent of power struggle , bringing to the fore surprising and alarming developments.

Dirty Trickster Roger Stone, a longtime. Trump friend, who was involved in a Watergate to help Nixon get elected, is being investigated by Mueller, on possible charges of having connection with Wikileaks, before the election.

Although now he denies any communications with Wikileaks, in the not too distant past he boasted about such involvement.

Meanwhile , Assange is still holed up in the Equadorian embassy in London to avoid prosecution in Sweden for a rape charge, and arrest by U.S. authorities.

Meno_ wrote:Dirty Trickster Roger Stone, a longtime. Trump friend, who was involved in a Watergate to help Nixon get elected, is being investigated by Mueller, on possible charges of having connection with Wikileaks, before the election.

Although now he denies any communications with Wikileaks, in the not too distant past he boasted about such involvement.

Meanwhile , Assange is still holed up in the Equadorian embassy in London to avoid prosecution in Sweden for a rape charge, and arrest by U.S. authorities.

Just an aside .

Roger Stone, at 16 yrs. old, orchestrated Watergate helping Nixon get elected, huh? Assange has been sighted recently? Rumor has it he's long since dead.

I AM OFFICIALLY IN HELL!

I live my philosophy, it's personal to me and people who engage where I live establish an unspoken dynamic, a relationship of sorts, with me and my philosophy.

Cutting folks for sport is a reality for the poor in spirit. I myself only cut the poor in spirit on Tues., Thurs., and every other Sat.

Meno_ wrote:Dirty Trickster Roger Stone, a longtime. Trump friend, who was involved in a Watergate to help Nixon get elected, is being investigated by Mueller, on possible charges of having connection with Wikileaks, before the election.

Although now he denies any communications with Wikileaks, in the not too distant past he boasted about such involvement.

Meanwhile , Assange is still holed up in the Equadorian embassy in London to avoid prosecution in Sweden for a rape charge, and arrest by U.S. authorities.

Just an aside .

Roger Stone, at 16 yrs. old, orchestrated Watergate helping Nixon get elected, huh? Assange has been sighted recently? Rumor has it he's long since dead.

Wendy, mischief is bred young, and 16 is old enough to cause damage. The point I was trying to make is, that the seeds of a paralleled situation kept growing. That's why they put young people in prison just the same. There are 5 year old murderers out there.

That Assange is dead would surely been known by now, he had too many contacts, including the embassy in London he was holes up in.

(CNN) Of late, House Republicans have experienced something of an uptick in expectations -- as the party's base has stirred to life amid the battle over the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and President Donald Trump's relentless focus on a caravan of people moving toward the nation's southern border in hopes of gaining entry.

"This will be the election of the caravan, Kavanaugh, law and order, tax cuts, and common sense," Trump said on the campaign trail in recent days.

There's no question that there has been some marginal narrowing of things like the generic ballot test in recent national polls, movement that suggests that the most catastrophic outcome for House Republicans -- seat losses upward of 40 -- are less likely today than, say, a month ago.

In that vein, some Republicans seized on new data from a poll of 69 battleground House districts by The Washington Post and the Schar School that shows 50% of voters backing the Democratic candidate in their district and 47% supporting the GOP candidate.

That 3-point gap seems like really good news for a party that has faced, at times, double-digit deficits in the generic ballot. Right? Wrong -- on a couple of fronts.

1. This is not a generic ballot questionThe generic ballot tests goes like this: "If the election were today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate running in your district?" This is not that. The Post story on the poll notes: "Surveys identified the major-party candidates by name in each district." So, in each of these 69 battleground seats, the respondents were given the actual names of the two major party candidates on the ballot and asked to choose which candidate they would prefer. Then those numbers were aggregated into the total percentage choosing the named Democratic candidate in their districts and the total percentage choosing the Republican one.

2. These districts are not 50-50 partisan splitsLost, I think, amid the focus on the 50%-47% number is the fact that of these 69 districts, 63 of them are currently controlled by Republicans. Forty-eight of them were carried by Trump in 2016. And in that election, the Republican candidates took 56% of the vote in these 69 seats as compared to just 41% for the Democrats. This is not neutral ground -- or anything close to it. These are seats that, in the main, Republicans, in anything close to a status quo national political environment, would have very little worry about winning. That these districts are even marginally competitive speaks to the tilt of the playing field; that the Democratic candidates have a lead -- albeit a narrow one -- shows just how difficult this environment still is for Republicans.

One other point worth considering here: The 3-point Democratic edge is statistically unchanged from the 50%-46% advantage in these 69 districts that the Post-Schar poll found in the beginning of this month. Also unchanged is the fact that women are the reason for Democrats' lead; women went for the Democratic candidate by 15 points in the earlier poll and favor the Democratic candidates by 13 points -- 55% to 42% -- in this latest survey.

What the Post-Schar polling finds then is not good news for Republicans but good news for Democrats. In the battle for the House, the terrain of which should overwhelmingly favor Republicans, Democrats are running even or even slightly ahead. And that fact hasn't changed throughout a month that, broadly speaking, has been a good one for Republican efforts to gin up excitement and intensity in their base.

The Point: Numbers don't always tell the story that a cursory glance suggests they do. Or the story you want them to.

Ccoming down to a kind of pseudo reality- or ?

Related BlogsFOXTROT ALPHAFrom the networkAV ClubDeadspinGizmodoJalopnikJezebelKotakuLifehackerSplinterThe TakeoutThe RootThe OnionClickholeFord Says American Steel Is Now the Most Expensive in the World Thanks to Trump

Michael BallabanToday 10:10amFiled to:TMS

Expensive trade wars, who the shorts REALLY want to win, and burning BMWs. This is the Morning Shift for October 23, 2018.

1st Gear: Trade Wars Are Good, And Easy To Win

President Donald Trump started a trade war with China and seemingly the rest of the world, and he began the war by hiking up tariffs on steel and aluminum. While the intended purpose was to “bring steel back” or somesuch, the market forces at work are vastly greater than any mere tariffs that can be thrown at such a globalized commodity.

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The end result? Steel is just way more expensive now, Ford says, according to Bloomberg:

Ford Motor Co. said Donald Trump’s tariffs have made steel more expensive in the U.S. than any other market, escalating the company’s criticism of the president’s trade war.

“U.S. steel costs are more than anywhere else in the world,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations, said Monday at an event marking the start of Ranger pickup production at a factory west of Detroit. He added that Ford is talking to the administration about the tariffs: “We tell them that we need to have competitive costs in our market in order to compete around the world.”﻿

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Bloomberg goes on to note that last month Ford CEO Jim Hackett said that the trade wars have already eaten a billion dollars off of the company’s profit, and that’s with most of its metals already sourced from the U.S.

This is mostly unrelated to the previous gear, but while we’re here talking about Ford, let’s be here, in the moment, to talk about Ford.

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Ford doesn’t think the new 2019 Ford Ranger will eat too much into its goose that lays golden eggs, the Ford F-150.

Also, it came from the same person, Joe Hinrichs, the aforementioned head of Ford’s global operations, speaking at the same event, but this time to a different publication. From Automotive News:

Ford Motor Co. doesn’t believe the midsize Ranger will steal much business from its profit-generating full-size F-series trucks when the smaller pickup returns to North American showrooms early next year.

“There always will be some substitution, but this is more of a lifestyle vehicle for people who want to use it for different purposes,” Joe Hinrichs, Ford’s president of global operations, said Monday at an event celebrating the Ranger’s expected start of production here next week. “The F-150's gotten bigger over time and more expensive. We believe there’s room now to slot the Ranger in very nicely in the showroom.”﻿

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While the new Ranger won’t exactly be cheap, starting at around $26,000, its big sibling, the F-150, has gotten so monumentally huge and expensive that Ford doesn’t think they’ll eat into each other too much.

Okay, okay, so “monumentally huge and expensive” means it’s got a base price of around $28,000, just $2,000 more than a Ranger, but Hinrichs is right. They’re different trucks for different people. I’m sure Ford will be fine.

3rd Gear: Dyson Wants to Build Cars in Singapore (?)

Dyson, the company that makes the vacuums and the weirdly over-powered bathroom hand dryer things that just spray water everywhere, also has a multi-billion dollar electric car program, in case you forgot. They want to build three electric cars entirely from scratch, and they’ve already made the crucial step of being very British and getting an old World War II airfield as a test track.

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Dyson hadn’t yet said where it was going to build cars, if it ever does. But CEO James Dyson is a prominent Brexiteer, so in keeping with that Patriotic™ theme, you’d expect it to be built by striking coal workers in Yorkshire or something.

But no.

The cars are going to be built in Singapore, the Guardian says:

The British manufacturer chose Singapore because of its proximity to “high-growth markets” in Asia, the chief executive, Jim Rowan, said in a memo to staff on Tuesday. The plant will be completed in 2020, with the car to be launched in 2021.﻿

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The Guardian goes on to say that Dyson already has a plant there, so it makes some semblance of sense for the company.

4th Gear: A Private Equity Firm Buys Magnetti Marelli

Magnetti Marelli is a parts supplier owned by Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Or rather, it was owned by FCA, because now it is own by private equity firm KKR, through Calsonic, Reuters reports:

If you own one of these cars, please get it fixed. Fiery death ain’t nothin’ to play around with.

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Reverse: Surely This Can Never Happen Again (It Will Happen Again)

On this day 89 years ago, the stock market completely tanked, kicking off the Great Depression. Obviously we’ve all learned our lesson since then.

Neutral: What Should Cars Be Made Out Of?

Clearly, steel is out of the question. It’s too expensive. I propose we make them out of wood. Wood can be a sustainable resource if harvested properly, and Morgans are good cars. The logic of this argument cannot be defeated.

6TH GEAR: ICYMIWhy Soldiers Carry Heavier Loads

Last edited by Meno_ on Tue Oct 23, 2018 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

WendyDarling wrote:Yes Meno, listen to those polls created by libtard MSM, the same polls who were wrong about the 2016 election cuz they're so reliable, right?

Wendy You have got a point there, but Fox News is just as bad and that corroborates the early prediction I had , that the Trumpian neo Kantian is not working, as attached to a escape route via pragmatic utility. Forgive the philosophic addendum, from which I have difficulty to get away from

From the growing caravan of migrants making its way toward America's southern border to a pledge of new tax cuts for middle-income Americans, the midterm season could yet hold a few twists and turns between now and Election Day.

The Nov. 6 elections are widely seen as a referendum on the Trump administration and Republican policies pushed in the past two years. Democrats hope to take control of the House and Senate, where Republicans hold a narrow lead.

But a series of developments could tilt the final outcome. Thousands of migrants are heading to the U.S. border seeking asylum, tensions with multiple foreign nations seem ready to boil over and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election is nearing a close.

Read on for a look at five potential October surprises.

Mueller drops a bombshellContinue Reading Below

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election appears to be wrapping up as he reportedly is readying his team's findings.Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election appears to be wrapping up as he reportedly is readying his team's findings. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 presidential election has continued for more than a year — and he's reportedly close to delivering his core findings.

This is likely to happen after the midterms. A pair of anonymous U.S. officials told Bloomberg that Mueller is getting ready to answer the two questions on everyone’s minds: whether Trump actually obstructed justice, and if he or his campaign colluded with Russia to win the White House.

But while the final product is not expected until after the elections, any hints about the findings or additional charges could invigorate Democrats -- or even rally Republicans convinced the probe is a "witch hunt." Meanwhile, if Democrats take the House of Representatives in November, party leaders are expected to re-open the probe into alleged collusion between Russian officials and the 2016 Trump campaign, calling back key witnesses, looking into Twitter messages between Donald Trump Jr. and WikiLeaks and allowing public hearings with top Trump officials.

FOX NEWS MIDTERM ELECTIONS HEADQUARTERS

So far, Mueller’s team has secured six guilty pleas and verdicts, including from four former Trump campaign advisers, and one jury conviction. He has pending indictments against more than two dozen others and three Russian companies.

Caravan confrontation escalatesCentral American migrants walking to the U.S. start their day departing Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico, Sunday, Oct. 21, 2018. Despite Mexican efforts to stop them at the border, about 5,000 Central American migrants resumed their advance toward the U.S. border early Sunday in southern Mexico. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo)

As thousands of migrants continue their trek through Mexico toward the U.S. border, Trump has threatened to call in the military for reinforcement and slash aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The confrontation could escalate in the days ahead.

Trump has made illegal immigration a rallying cry for his Republican base throughout the midterm elections, and the thousands of Central Americans traveling toward the border have become a highly visible example. He’s heaped the blame for illegal immigration and the caravan, specifically, on Democrats.

“Every time you see a Caravan, or people illegally coming, or attempting to come, into our Country illegally, think of and blame the Democrats for not giving us the votes to change our pathetic Immigration Laws!” Trump tweeted. “Remember the Midterms!”

DEMOCRATS AVOID SPARRING WITH TRUMP ON CARAVAN AS MIDTERM NEARS

While Trump’s continued focus on the caravan — particularly on social media — could rouse Republican voters, it could also do the opposite, boosting turnout among Democrats who seem more sympathetic toward the many migrants who have said they are fleeing widespread violence, poverty and corruption in their home countries.

“I think you run the risk of angering minority voters across the board, Latino, black and Asian-Americans and also alienating and distancing from whites, including conservatives and moderates now that they see what’s happening with the family separations,” Matt Barreto, co-founder of the research firm Latino Decision, told The Associated Press.

If the past is any indicator, the caravan is likely to disperse some as it continues through Mexico, with groups traveling at different rates and some choosing to seek asylum in Mexico.

New Trump tax cuts? Ahead of the midterm elections, Trump just promised a new round of tax cuts for “middle-income people.”

With Congress not in session until after the elections, Trump has conceded there wouldn’t be a vote until after Nov. 6. But the plan is clearly aimed at middle-class voters, and Trump said Monday he's looking at a 10 percent cut, with plans to unveil a new measure within the next two weeks.

Trump said the package will be a “major tax cut for middle-income people,” and unlike the 2017 tax overheal, won’t focus on businesses. He said his administration, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Rep. Kevin Brady, the Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, are all “working on it.”

Impeachment talk heats upThe possibility of Democrats gaining control of the House after the election would give them an opportunity to launch impeachment proceedings. And there have been increasing whispers about that scenario.

Still, in several key races, Democrats want to distance themselves from the idea in order not to alienate moderate and conservative voters.

Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke, who faces incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz in a fierce battle, has found a way to dance around the topic. He said while he would vote for impeaching Trump, he’s not in favor of actually initiating the proceedings at the moment.

TRUMP WARNS ‘MARKET WOULD CRASH’ IF DEMOCRATS IMPEACH HIM

But a more open embrace of impeachment by Democratic leaders and candidates could boost GOP turnout.

Republicans have used the possibility of impeachment as fodder in their campaigns. During a debate between Florida gubernatorial candidates Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis, the former Republican congressman accused his opponent of not being able to work with Trump to get things done for the state if he’s elected.

“You need to be able to work with the president,” DeSantis said. “Andrew can’t do that. He wants to impeach Trump, he’s always saying bad things about him.”

Foreign tensions flareAn escalation of tensions with a foreign nation could also impact the upcoming elections — as multiple relationships hang in the balance.

From trade with China to the pullout from an arms control treaty with Russia to Saudi Arabia’s inconsistent and widely challenged responses to the death of an activist, Trump’s response is pivotal.

What exactly happened to Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whom Saudi authorities claim died in a fistfight with officials in the consulate in Turkey, has rolled into the midterm elections. Candidates have sparred over criticisms of the administration’s response to Saudi Arabia’s inconsistencies and defense of the United States’ relationship with the Gulf nation.

TRUMP NOT SATISFIED WITH EXPLANATION OF KHASHOGGI’S KILLING

In a debate with her GOP challenger, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren said the country needs a stronger response to Saudi Arabia and charged Trump “is showing he is not capable.”

But Republican Rep. Geoff Diehl said it’s imperative to “continue to have a relationship” with Saudi Arabia, pointing to the many businesses in Massachusetts that do business in the kingdom.

Additionally, ties between the U.S. and China are continuing down a path of acrimony amid a trade policy kerfuffle and accusations the communist nation plans to influence upcoming elections.

Vice President Mike Pence has accused China of launching an “unprecedented effort” to influence the 2018 and 2020 elections to unseat Trump, warning the communist nation is responding to the president’s tough trade policies.

He pointed to Trump’s tough line on Beijing, particularly Trump’s decision to impose $250 billion in tariffs on goods coming from the country. He said in response, Beijing is using its power “to interfere in the domestic policies of this country and to interfere in the politics of the United States.”

Last edited by Meno_ on Wed Oct 24, 2018 12:55 am, edited 1 time in total.

WendyDarling wrote:Yes Meno, listen to those polls created by libtard MSM, the same polls who were wrong about the 2016 election cuz they're so reliable, right?

Wendy You have got a point there, but Fox News is just as bad and that corroborates the early prediction I had , that the Trumpian neo Kantianism is not working, as attached to a escape route via pragmatic utility. Forgive the philosophic addendum, from which I have difficulty to get away from.

WORLD War 3 fears have been sparked after 50,000 NATO troops arrived in Norway to start one of the biggest military exercises since the Cold War in a huge show of force against Russia.

There is a sense that there is an evolving connection, between war fears, war rattling and the paranoia over the illusive charges of international politics. Can the nature and the intentions behind such be collaborated, or dismissed?

Washington (CNN) Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci said Wednesday that President Donald Trump "is a liar" and that he "should probably dial down the lying."

Appearing on "New Day" to promote his new book, "Trump: The Blue-Collar President," Scaramucci was asked by CNN's John Berman about the President's pattern of spreading falsehoods and what he would call someone who spreads lies.

Scaramucci said such people are "like a rascal, like a scoundrel."

"I asked you what do you call someone who likes to lie? You said a scoundrel," Berman replied. "Another thing you could call someone who likes to lie is a liar. Is he a liar?"

"OK, well we both know that he's telling lies. So if you want me to say he's a liar, I'm happy to say he's a liar," Scaramucci said.

"Nobody should lie. I'm not a big believer in lying. But politicians happen to lie," he said.

"You want to say that to the camera? To the President?" Berman asks.

"Nobody should lie," Scaramucci said after turning to the look directly into a camera. "But, you know, you're a politician now, so politicians lie when their lips are moving, and so all these people lie. But you should probably dial down the lying because you don't need to. You're doing a great job for the country. So dial that down, and you'll be doing a lot better."

The former White House official said that there's "an entertainment aspect" to the President's lying.

"When he goes to a rally like that, you know, there's a level of embellishment there because he's playing to the crowd," he said. "He's playing for the laughs. And you know, that's been his persona, that's been his style. And by the way, you can't really argue with the success of it."

Scaramucci left the White House in July 2017 after only 10 days on the job and an infamous, expletive-laden interview he gave to The New Yorker in which he ripped top White House officials by name.

Since then, Scaramucci has remained a visible media figure, often defending Trump but at times making public appeals about curtailing some of his behavior and changing policies.

What did I say about the comic clown entertainer? I f has come home to roost.

But while read my lips is rare, here otnnegsnfor acceptance aa a modus operans. Still, Woodrow Wilson haunts the White house, and it did not fare very well.

Here is the latest poll on expectations regarding the upcoming elections:

FiveThirtyEight’s forecast for the midterms puts the likelihood of Democrats taking the House at more than 70 percent. Their chances of taking the Senate are lower, but Republicans are hardly a lock despite a very favorable map for them. And if Democrats manage to eke out a majority in both houses of Congress, here is the poll’s really bad news for Trump: Half the country wants him impeached.

Earlier in the day, President Donald Trump called for Americans to “come together in peace and harmony” after authorities seized suspicious packages containing “potential explosive devices” that were sent to CNN and the homes and offices of leading Democrats, including former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Zucker issued a combative response to Trump’s appeal:

Sanders fired back with a tweet, in which she accused Zucker of ignoring Trump’s call and instead choosing to “attack and divide” the country:

Sanders’ response did not go over well on Twitter, where people accused her of hypocrisy, suggested she send the same message to the president and reminded her of all the times Trump has attempted to incite violence:

Yes, Fixed, the point is taken, but there is always a cross bleeding between the parties , Mcain was likewise I believe , so was Trump himself a one time democrat I think he changed affiliation five times meaning little except to show that there is great of uncertainty among the representation and what it is really that is being represented. Is it a matter of interest that can be gleaned from such variance, and does that imply one that is more a show of intentional self heading motives, or one that begins with socially constructed acts of benefit?

The deep South was at one time faithfully Democratic , so is it merely a matter of changing labels, due to the content of the dynamics having changed, or is it merely an example of irrefuted presence of some thing much more ominous, the sunset of the political corrected lack of transparency? Such is usually subject of undeniably falsified heavily funded Political expression , regardless of their validity .

That is the cesspool, and the most that can be said about it, is that its consistent with more mud slinging then efforts to clarify the reasons and possible outcome of gaining social rather then personal benefits.

I think to a larger part the latter , the need to hold roles of power , is the facade behind which such tremendous shifts occur, irrespective of public support or gain, and this is why, all is in such turmoil now, because it's election time.

If things don't turn out well for either party, the fixers can always come in, to gain precious time, to try to minimize the damage by using the public's loss of memory in direct proportion to regain support.

President Trump derided rival billionaire Tom Steyer as a "wacky" and "crazed & stumbling lunatic" on Sunday, after Steyer -- who was one of the prominent liberals to receive a threatening suspicious package last week -- said he "absolutely was blaming" Trump for creating an atmosphere in which "anything can bubble up, and anything is bubbling up."

How a Democratic majority could undermine the Mueller probeIf Democrats retake the House, they want to aggressively open probes into issues the special counsel is also investigating.

By DARREN SAMUELSOHN 10/28/2018 05:04 PM EDTAdam Schiff Rep. Adam Schiff, the likely new chairman of the House Intelligence Committee if Democrats win power in November, has signaled plans to focus on unfinished business related to the Russia investigation. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Facebook Twitter Google + Email PrintDemocrats have religiously deferred to special counsel Robert Mueller over the last 17 months, hamstrung by their lack of congressional power and expressing faith that the respected investigator will get the job done if left alone.

That could all change after November.

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If Democrats retake the House in the midterm elections, they’re prepared to use their newfound subpoena power to aggressively open probes into President Donald Trump’s finances and connections to Russia. But doing so — just as Mueller appears to be entering the final laps of his own probe — would create tensions between the special counsel and a newly crowned majority party replenished by scores of freshman lawmakers who rode into Capitol Hill on an anti-Trump wave.

House Democratic aides have been meeting informally in recent months to discuss ways to do their jobs while avoiding stepping on Mueller’s toes in 2019, even toying with the idea of calling the special counsel in for a private bipartisan briefing.

“The House may want to start their oversight by bringing in special counsel Mueller to hear from him,” said former California Rep. Henry Waxman, who chaired the House Oversight Committee during the final two years of the George W. Bush administration and has been meeting informally with House Democrats to discuss investigation strategies.

Potential conflicts could come on many fronts. For starters, Democrats will be eager to see Mueller’s findings and hard-pressed to give him space if he’s not finished yet. If Mueller’s Justice Department supervisors resist making the special counsel’s work public, a clash could emerge.

Perhaps most potentially disruptive: Democrats could cause Mueller problems if they start granting immunity to witnesses whom the special counsel still wants to question or prosecute.

“It’s something that I think we have to handle with great care,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) conceded last week during an event at Harvard University.

“We won’t interfere,” the potential next House speaker added. “We shouldn’t. We won’t. But we do have to have one thing that we should all agree on: the truth for the American people and where the truth leads us is another thing.”

Pelosi’s pledge is easier said than done, though, with early signs that the two sides could overlap just as Democrats gear up for an open 2020 presidential primary season.

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year released a “partial list” of more than 70 people, organizations and companies they said Republicans refused to fully pursue as part of their Russia investigation.

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the likely new chairman of the panel if Democrats win power in November, has signaled plans to focus on that unfinished business, including hearings on suspected money laundering at the Trump Organization and issuing a subpoena for communications between the president and his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., surrounding a 2016 meeting with a Russian attorney who was promising to deliver dirt on Hillary Clinton.

On the House Judiciary Committee, Democrats poised to begin impeachment proceedings have offered up an oversight road map that signals potential conflicts with Mueller. In August, they called for a Justice Department briefing to glean more details about former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and the allegations that Trump directed him to break campaign finance laws. They’ve also called for an examination into Trump potentially abusing his pardon power, as well as his associates implicated in crimes from the Mueller investigation.

It’s not known to what extent Mueller is probing these areas, but Democrats concede that poking around could inadvertently draw out the special counsel’s own investigative interests far sooner than the special counsel might like.

“It’s a problem I’d like to have one day,” said a senior House Democratic aide.

Come January, Democrats say they will reassess their oversight plans based on the election outcome and to take into account whatever stage Mueller is at in his investigation. They’ll also need to consider whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein remain in their jobs. Trump has signaled interest in changing up his DOJ leadership, a move that would mean new oversight of the special counsel’s investigation.

If history is any guide, an aggressive Congress and the Justice Department don’t always get along, especially when there’s an independent counsel involved.

Already, there are ongoing disputes between Trump-allied Republicans on Capitol Hill and the Justice Department over documents and briefings tied to the origins of the government’s Trump-Russia investigation.

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Further back, in 2008, Democrats — led by Waxman — argued that President George W. Bush thwarted their investigations into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity by invoking executive privilege in response to a subpoena for Vice President Dick Cheney’s testimony to the FBI.

And during the investigations into the Reagan administration’s secret sale of arms to Iran, Congress’ decision to offer immunity in exchange for testimony from retired Marine Corps Lt. Col. Oliver North and Reagan national security adviser John Poindexter drove a federal appeals court to vacate the two officials’ convictions.

Lt. Col. Oliver NorthLt. Col. Oliver North testifies before Congress in the Iran-Contra probe. Congress’ decision to offer immunity to North and John Poindexter later led to their convictions being reversed. | AP Photo

The Watergate scandal was a rare example of the judicial and congressional branches working in tandem. Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski in 1974 even sent a road map of his work with a federal grand jury to the House Judiciary Committee, which helped pave the way for impeachment proceedings and President Richard Nixon’s resignation.

Not all legal experts believe having Congress put its stamp on work that’s simultaneously part of an active law enforcement probe is a bad thing.

“Being supportive of an investigation doesn’t in the end mean deferring to the criminal investigators,” said John Q. Barrett, a former associate counsel who worked under independent counsel Lawrence Walsh during the Reagan-era investigation into secret U.S. arms sales to Iran. “When you’re the minority and powerless to do the investigation, then it’s easy to be cheering for the Justice Department investigation. But when you’re the majority and doing your own House investigation, you may well butt heads.”

Douglas Letter, a recently retired DOJ senior attorney who teaches at Georgetown University Law Center, noted that Congress and Mueller have “totally different goals.”

The congressional investigation is designed to give the American public a report on what happened in the 2016 election and “whether there’s anything political that can be made of it,” he said. Mueller, in the meantime, is a criminal investigator whose job is to identify crimes and prosecute the perpetrators.

But Republicans will be quick to pounce on the earliest whiff of oversight overreach. They’re primed to point out changes in tone from lawmakers who have been deferential to the Justice Department. Schiff, for example, has been insistent that DOJ shouldn’t give up information about core parts of the Mueller investigation.

“If the shoe is on the other foot in a month and a half, let’s see if he stays consistent,” said William Moschella, the former head of Justice Department legislative affairs office during the George W. Bush administration.

Trump allies slammed Pelosi earlier this week after she said during a CNN event that subpoena power was “a great arrow to have in your quiver in terms of negotiating on other subjects.”

“This is what they do in Third World countries. Disgusting concept and a slippery slope that America wants no part of,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter.

“It’s about politics for them,” Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for the Trump personal legal team and the Bush DOJ, told POLITICO. “If they think there’s political advantage to stepping on the special counsel’s toes, they’ll do it.”

Most observers believe, though, that the Democrats will hold back from causing problems for Mueller, at least for a few months, if they take the majority. Some predicted that Democrats could even try to strike an arrangement with the special counsel to let his team operate for six months or so without significant congressional pressure.

For Democrats, though, that’s a narrow window before other demands start taking over, said Paul McNulty, a former George W. Bush deputy attorney general.